Heavy shot for Haradinaj, American magazine ranked beside Fetullah Gulen and Julian Asnge

Carles Puigdemont

When Spain left France's years behind, it held a vote on the Spanish Constitution. The people of Catalonia voted in favour of that constitution, with over 90 percent of the vote, in 1978, making it illegal for the region to declare independence from Spain without changing the constitution, which can be done only by the parliament of Spain, Madrid.

Nearly 40 years later, Catalonia President Charles Puigdemont led a referendum on independence, despite the constitutional obstacle. The vote was boycotted by anti-independence parties (like in a similar referendum in 2014), and was subjected to an oppressive reaction from Madrid. Puigdemont used the referendum results to announce the separation of Catalonia from Spain. Madrid ʹ calling to its constitutional right dissolved the Catalonia Parliament, and ordered the holding of new regional elections. Given the danger of possible sedition and incentive, Puigdemont fled to Brussels, where he is staying even today.

In early regional elections in Catalonia, a union of pro-division parties again came out victorious, and Puigdemont now wants to be re-elected president. And since he says he's prepared to rule through Skype, Madrid claims against. It remains to be seen how things work out in the coming weeks. But Catalon separatism has not disappeared, as the December elections show. Madrid might one day be forced to leave a legal referendum, regardless of whether Puridgemont will lead this initiative, or not.

Fethullah Gulen

Once in Turkey, the country's president, Recep Tayip Erdogan, was considered a real reformer. And, along with his political ally, cleric Fethullah Gulen (who has millions of supporters, thanks to a wide network of 100 and more schools and community centres), Erdogan managed to reintroduce religion in Turkey's secular policy until then. At that world, Erdogan's rise was praised by the West as the country's political roast. The prosperity of the Turkish economy had also helped.

Later, Erdogan and Gulen collapsed, and the latter fled to Pennsylvania, the United States of America, from which they could publicly criticise Erdogan's government from a safe distance. Erdogan has been urging Washington to extradite Gulen to Turkey for several years. But America refuses that. Then came the failed July 2016 stamp, for which Erdogan blamed Gulen and his supporters. Erdogan's retaliatory cleansing has included the arrest of more than 50,000 people and has cost some 150,000 people with job losses.

Meanwhile, American-Turkish relations have only deteriorated. Now that the war against I The SISïs has passed through Syria, the battle for what follows has begun. America has announced last week that it aims to help its allies on the ground ... Syria's Kurds to create a 30,000-strong security force. Erdogan, who intends this will strengthen the considerable Kurdish community, currently living within Syria's borders, has launched an offensive against these America-backed Kurds. This implies that there are now two NATO member states as an opposing side in a direct struggle, damaging confidence in NATO at a time when there is the mood for new reforms of joint European defence. Gulen, meanwhile, lives on in Pennsylvania.

Julian Assange

Australian citizens became world famous as the leader of Wikipedia, which they founded in 2006. In 2007, this website published the procedure guide that the United States implemented in the Gulf of Guantànamo; in 2008, it published Sarah Paul's emails from its private account. In 2010, Wikipedia published over 90,000 secret documents for the Afghanistan War.

This was also the year when two Wikipedia volunteers denounced Assangen to Swedish authorities for allegedly sexual assault. Assange turned himself over to British authorities in London but objected to Sweden's appeal for his extradition. After a series of appeals, Britain decided to respond positively to Swedish demand, prompting Assangen to flee to the Ecuadoran Embassy in London in 2012. He's been hiding there ever since. Although Sweden has withdrawn its extradition request last year, US prosecutors are preparing their charges against it for exposure to classified materials.

Asseng was given asylum by former Ecuador President Rafael Correa, who enjoyed challenging Western powers. But Ecuador's new president, Lenin Moreno, has called Assangen “more than a trouble”. He doesn't want anyone to accuse him of undergoing American pressure, but he also wants a fresh start with Washington. Unfortunately for Moreno, Ecuador still has no plan to get Assangen out of the embassy facility, which it entered over five years ago.

Mikhail Saakashvili

Educated in the West, Saakashvili was one of the leaders of the “Rose” that went through without violence in 2003; then he served as president of Georgia from 2004 to 2013. After leaving power, accused of misuse of money and human rights violations, Saakashvili fled to the United States. But in 2015 he accepted an offer by Ukrainian President Petro Porosenko to become governor of the Odessa region in Ukraine and to bring about much needed reforms. He gave up Georgian citizenship to become a citizen of Ukraine.

In November 2016, he resigned from his post, holding a press conference where, in anger, Poshenko accused him of personally supporting corruption in Ukraine and “local groups of Odessa”. This, of course, did not leave him many friends in the Ukrainian government elite, who since then accuse him of helping a criminal organisation led by Ukraine's former president, Viktor Yanukovych. Poroshenko has stripped him of Ukrainian citizenship in July last year, making him a person without citizenship.

In the December following, images of Saakashvili were published, making efforts to evade police in Kiev buildings. When the police finally caught him, crowds of his supporters surrounded the vehicle that had to take him to a detention center, and he managed to escape.