Turkey was traditionally a bystander in Middle East politics.

China is no innocent bystander in America s race to the abyss.

These developments will come anyway, and, once they do, the United States will become a mere bystander.

Many European leaders believe that the rest of the world owes the eurozone a bailout because the currency union is just an innocent bystander.

My son may have ended up seeing me shoot that man, or shoot a bystander. Or I could have even shot my son, if something had gone horribly wrong.

Until the United Nations backed Libyan intervention, Europe seemed increasingly a bystander in international affairs, and even its participation in Libya is largely a Franco British affair, with Germany opting out and choosing a quiet life.

As an integral part of Europe with EU membership as a strategic objective, Turkey is not an indifferent bystander on the contrary, we strive to participate in the current debate by offering our own views and ideas.

Turkey was traditionally a bystander in Middle East politics. Its leaders believed that there was little to be contributed or gained by getting involved in the region s problems, and that Turkey s Ottoman legacy would leave its Arab neighbors suspicious.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been a favorite target of opponents of austerity for some time now, and it is understandable that, after months of being a bystander to the EU s painful inability to govern, Germany has reluctantly indeed, insufficiently taken charge.

It sees itself, such as it is, the it, as something that will create the impression that there will be political cost, there will be a political price to be paid, for allowing genocide, for not having an heroic imagination, for not being an upstander but for being, in fact, a bystander.