Our April 14 report on Turkey's judiciary coup d'état galvanized readers. One said, "It's hard to believe in Ataturk's antiquated values." Another wrote, "The court is acting in accordance with a democratically approved Constitution." A third criticized the West: "It does not want a strong secular Turkey."

The Will of the Turkish People
I am writing to respond to your April 14 article "Attack of the Judges." I'd like to express my deepest concerns about the indictment of the democratically elected Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey. I am critical of the Turkish judicial system for not respecting the choice of citizens who have decided that AKP should rule the country. There is a big conflict between the military and the AKP. The AKP has sponsored humanistic reforms by allowing free access for women with headscarves to universities and improving the political situation of the Kurds. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's policy will modernize Turkey and guarantee people freedom of speech as well as making life easier for dissidents and intellectuals. If granting equal rights to people independently of their religious beliefs is a crime, then I would prefer to be a criminal. Yet the Turkish elite is trying to bring the country back to our founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's ideology and the system of rigid secularism. It's difficult to force a diverse population to believe in Ataturk's antiquated values. These recent developments in the country's policy are terrain for tumult and chaos. The world's view of Turkey will be negative if the judiciary undermines a democratically elected party.
B. Emine
Graz, Austria

As a modern, secular Turkish woman, I would like to ask why the European nations never supported the secular public in Turkey while millions of Turkish people were on the streets protesting against the government. Instead, Europe has largely supported Recep Tayyip Erdogan while we were on the streets protesting against him and his party. Now the Constitutional Court, our highest authority, is working to prosecute the AKP and remove its clear threat to our secularism. And to our amazement, Europe is again showing sympathy to the AKP and interfering in our internal relations in the name of democracy. It would seem that Europe does not want a strong, secular Turkey. Its support of the AKP would allow Europe to continue to characterize Turkey as un-European. Otherwise, it would have supported us in our efforts to protect our secular Western system.
Defne Ozsayin
Istanbul, Turkey

I grew up believing that the western world was civilized and that Westerners told the truth. But now you are falsely accusing a democratic judicial court in Turkey of committing an undemocratic act. I advise you to think twice before you criticize secular Turkey. This court is acting in accordance with a Constitution that was democratically approved—in a general referendum of all Turkish citizens held in 1982, with more than 90 percent voting for it.
Ulker I. Smith
Ankara, Turkey

How dare you say those things about Turkish law. You should know that Islamists in Turkey are what racists are to Europe. You said nothing when Jörg Haider aroused controversy with his racist rhetoric and unflagging popularity in Austria. You should be ashamed of your double standards.
Ferda Ak
Istanbul, Turkey

China, Tibet and the West
I refer to your April 14 article titled "The Dark Side of the Olympics." I was astonished that in a story about China's alleged "crackdown" on Tibetans, you printed a picture of a monk being dragged away by the Nepalese police. Your mistake is typical of the Western media, which are biased against China. In your condemnation of the "crackdown," have you given any consideration to how the Chinese people are perceiving the Western media's portrayals of the Tibetan unrest? Large numbers of Chinese, including many in Hong Kong, believe that the West is using the Tibetan uprisings to demonize China and deny it its rightful place on the world stage. Moreover, when your correspondents accuse China of behaving more like a "tin-pot dictatorship" than a "budding superpower" in the local police's denial of regional protests, all you do is use outdated rhetoric and talking points from inept PR people. If you really know China, can you blame public-security officials in the interior for lacking modern PR techniques? How many of them would have received modern PR training or been tutored in the techniques of spin? Have you forgotten that China is a developing nation and has millennia of feudal, authoritarian rule behind it? How can you blame China for not becoming modern overnight?
Simon Chan
Hong Kong

Protests of the Olympic-torch relay are not the most effective way to communicate with China. In Chinese culture, loud voices are not effective in resolving conflicts. Furthermore, disrupting the Olympic-torch relay has drawn the attention of the world to Tibet. The distrust aroused by this incident between China and the West could be too high a price to pay. Young Chinese view the Olympic Games as an object of national pride won by persistent efforts over generations. It is a "coming-out party" to showcase China's economic progress and its opening up to the world. The symbolic meaning of torch protests is considered an intentional humiliation of China by the West, and not as a challenge to Beijing's Tibet policy. Finally, China needs a stable social environment to continue its development. The country has been open to the rest of the world for less than 30 years. The Olympic Games may be a good opportunity for the West to develop a greater understanding of China and could further open the door for progress and reform.
Timothy Yin
Shanghai, China

Your recent articles, including "The Dark Side of the Olympics," strive to do justice to the topic of Tibet and China's occupation of the territory since 1951, when the People's Liberation Army invaded it. China still feels the need to assert to the world that Tibet is an integral part of China. But like the Player Queen in Hamlet, it protests too much. If China really had a valid case, it wouldn't be so paranoid and oversensitive about the issue. Hapless Tibet has a rich, highly evolved and esoteric spiritual culture. When it was brutally invaded, it sent repeated appeals to the United Nations asking for help. However, the world stood by while the Chinese took over (and it still does). Although many countries have been occupied at some time by a neighbor, that is no justification for annexation.
Gun Nidhi Dalmia
New Delhi, India

Death of the Death Penalty
Having just read in your April 14 issue that "a decade ago … Britain still employed the death penalty," I would be fascinated to know where you got that information ("If Lethal Dictators Ban the Death Penalty, Who Cares?"). To my certain knowledge, the death penalty was abolished in Britain at least 40 years ago, and it has been nearly 50 years since anyone was hanged in the United Kingdom.
John Wadman
Birmingham, England

Your item on the death penalty is misleading. You write that "a decade ago … pillars of Western civilization like Canada and Britain still employed the death penalty." This is not so. While the death penalty was removed from military codes of justice in the United Kingdom and Canada only in 1998, it had much earlier been removed from their respective civil codes; the last execution in Canada took place in 1962, and in the United Kingdom in 1964.
Nicholas Coghlan
Ottawa, Canada

Merchants of Ivory
It is tragic that so many people in Asia, and especially China, are so ignorant when it comes to saving the species of the world ("Extinction Trade," March 10). They have no thought of how it will change our biological balance. If, for example, you eliminate sharks, which are the top predators of the seas, you wreak havoc—another species will take over, and that might have dire consequences. Maybe Asians will finally open their eyes now and realize that they are supporting ecoterrorism and guerrillas. I was also very disturbed to see NEWSWEEK PROMOTING items made from woolly-mammoth ivory in the GOOD LIFE SECTION of the same issue. When your readers see this photo of chess pawns, it will create a demand that will renew the demand for elephant ivory. We all have a duty to stop the killing.
Eva Maimstrom Shivdasani
Bangkok, Thailand

Who Are the Terrorists?
Why do both the British and the American governments support the Israeli massacre of unarmed civilians, including women and children, in Gaza ("Talking to the Enemy," March 17)? It would seem that we are happy to be compliant in the obvious dehumanization of Palestinians on the grounds that their elected representatives are from Hamas and that that political party has been declared a terrorist organization by the Bush administration, notwithstanding that Hamas's legitimate aim is to end the illegal Israeli occupation of Arab land. Terrorism is defined as violence and intimidation against civilians. Is this not precisely the acts of the Israel Defense Forces? Who exactly are the terrorists, Palestinians or Israelis? How many Israeli civilians have been killed or injured by homemade rockets in the past five years, and how many Palestinians by American missiles, cluster bombs and tank fire? The conclusion must inevitably be that Israel, shamefully supported by the United Kingdom, uses terrorism as a deliberate tactic in order to implement a strategy that is directly in breach of the Geneva Conventions and international law and of bilateral EU trade agreements. Now, for the first time since the terrorist actions of the Stern Gang and the Irgun Zvai Leumi following the second world war, against both the Arabs and the British in Palestine, we are again witnessing—dare we say it?—Jewish terrorism.
Michael Halpern
Westbourne, England

The One-Child Policy Grows Up
Reading your march 17 article about China's one-child policy, I was pleased to know that Beijing is considering scrapping this policy, which was introduced in 1979 ("Playing With the Old Blood Rules"). I agree that the policy succeeded in controlling population growth, but it had other profound consequences for those Chinese couples having only one child. Now, after almost 30 years, this policy begins to near its next generation. This means that an adult born after 1979 would have to provide support for his or her two parents as well as four grandparents. I believe this would create an enormous burden on China's poor grown children, especially those living in rural areas. Besides, sooner or later the one-child policy will transform family structures and relationships to the extent where there will be no kin to call brother, sister, uncle, aunt, cousin, nephew or niece. In other parts of the world, most families usually depend on their relatives for support during difficult times. It's a pity that many children of the new generation in China will not have any close relatives to call on for support in times of need. They would have to depend on their friends or neighbors. This would not have been the case if a two-child policy had been adopted instead.
Suresh H. Punjabi
Hong Kong

Teens Who Choose Suicide
I have just read your March 10 article "How Grim Is My Valley." It is really heartbreaking that the suicide rate is increasing. It is another serious problem—and one that may not have an easy solution. It is not like the global-warming problem, where using your car less could make a difference. It is worse because it involves trying to understand the minds of teenagers, knowing what they think and their worries. Teenagers may sometimes be as impenetrable as a rock when it comes to letting others know their anxiety. I am a teenager, and I have experienced such attitudes in my daily life. Even though I understand other teens, I can't help them, because when it comes to personal problems only the person involved can help himself. Part of the real reason some teenagers have problems and want to kill themselves is, I believe, the parents: after all, parents are our first educators. I am not blaming all parents—it also depends on how teenagers respond to their help—but parents sure determine our future. They are our guides through life; without them teenagers get lost really easily, and finding our way back onto the right path on our own may seem impossible because of our limited experience, and that's when suicide presents itself as a tempting but heartbreaking way out of problems.
Mariana Lopez Durand
Mexico City, Mexico

Correction
In "Mysteries and Complications" (March 24), we said that the MMR vaccine once contained thimerosal. It did not. Other childhood vaccines, however, did contain the mercury-based preservative. NEWSWEEK regrets the error.