Its spare Soviet-era grounds lack the gothic spires of Britain’s Eton College or the Romanesque facades of the great Paris lycées. But the graduates of Fizmat, a math and physics academy in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s former capital, probably wield more influence in their native land than do graduates from any single elite school in the West in their respective countries.
The plot is thickening in the case of a European Union-based documentary crew that was barred from filming in Armenia. Authorities in Yerevan believe the documentary’s executive producer is on “friendly terms with Azerbaijani officials,” and wants to create a program on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict from a pro-Baku viewpoint. The producer, Andrius Brokas, is vehemently denying the allegation.
Sometimes it seems as if relations between Turks and Armenians can never improve. Hence, it comes as considerable relief to read Family of Shadows and Deep Mountain. These two works, in different ways, are about change and redemption.
Rustam Ibragimbekov, an Azeri screenwriter, did not look to international negotiations or non-governmental organization reports for help in trying to show the impact of Azerbaijan and Armenia’s 23-year conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh on ordinary lives.
The official reconciliation process between Turkey and Armenia may now be frozen, but a late January book exhibit in Yerevan suggests that the undercurrent for dialogue and understanding between the two long-time enemies remains strong.
Like most former Soviet republics, Kyrgyzstan spent its post-independence years hunting for a national identity separate from the one forced on it by Moscow, and that search included the resurgence of some very un-Slavic-sounding names. But today, with hundreds of thousands of Kyrgyz depending on ties with Russia as their key source of income, bread-and-butter worries are trumping ideology.
An attempt to screen Azerbaijani short films in the Armenian capital of Yerevan has failed, blocked in large part by a blitz of opposition spread by social networking websites. But the organizers say they are undaunted and will try to go ahead with the film festival at a later date.
Officials in Georgia harbor ambitions of turning the South Caucasus country into a global cultural center, but those plans took a big hit when a deal to bring the New York Philharmonic to Tbilisi imploded recently. Now, Georgian officials are scrambling to repair the damage done to the country’s image.
Homosexuality and sexual violence on prime time Turkish television: there is a lot of shocking stuff being broadcast in Turkey these days. And Turkish conservatives are horrified.
