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2025 in Estonia (and Riga and Stockholm) in Pics

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A Defensive Democracy

According to Tõnis Saarts, Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at Tallinn University , defensive democracy is a rare form of contemporary democracy that prioritizes existential and national security over democratic rights and liberties, but, while doing so, it still adheres to the core principles of democracy. [This] doctorine asserts that in order to preserve the country's very existence and the democratic system itself, it may be necessary to curtail certain democratic freedoms and rights of specific social groups on some occasions. [A] second feature of a defensive democracy is that because the very existence of the country and democratic order is depicted as being under constant threat, the securitization of various policy areas and societal domains gradually becomes a new normality and necessity. In international relations "securitization" is defined as the process in which state actors transform subjects from regular political issues into matters of "...

Estonia is...

...around 1,100 miles (1,780 kilometers) from England and 1,270 miles (2,045 km) from Turkey, "as the crow flies," according to Google Gemini. A Ryanair (FR) flight from Lennart Meri Tallinn Airport (TLL) to London Stansted Airport (STN) is two hours and forty-five minutes, an airBaltic (BT) flight to London Gatwick (LGW) is three hours and five minutes, and a WIZZ Airlines (W) flight to London Luton (LTN) three hours and ten minutes. A Turkish Airlines (TK) flight from TLL to Istanbul Airport (IST) is three hours and thirty-five minutes. Getting from IST, one of the largest airport terminals in the world, to the heart of Istanbul, a metropolis with more than 15.5 million residents, requires five stages: 1) walking from the arrival gate to the terminal exit (through passport control), 2) walking from the terminal exit to the subterranean M11 metro platform (through the fare turnstiles), 3) riding the M11 to the Gayrettepe metro station, the metro line's southern terminus,...