If, like me, you're finding it hard to feel hopeful about the state of the world, here's something to lift your spirits. All of a sudden it seems that cities across the globe are standing up for liberty and rights.
The big story at the moment, of course, is Hong Kong's protests against Chinese control. On the other side of Asia, meanwhile, the people of Istanbul are coming to terms with the success of their own peaceful revolt against authoritarianism. In June, a candidate devoted to the "language of love" was elected mayor, defeating a former prime minister from the party of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Sinem Adar and Yektan Türkyılmaz argue that it's impossible to say what will come next. "The political space in Turkey after 23 June has burst wide open," they say. But since the paranoid Erdoğan has dismantled so much of the normal apparatus of governance, it could be either a still narrower dictatorship or a radical liberalisation that occupies that space.
