Only a few weeks ago, Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was in the vanguard of those calling for political change in Egypt. These days, Erdogan’s government in Ankara is taking a very different approach toward the uprising in Libya.
The tradition of the kurultai, or occasional popular assembly, in Kyrgyzstan stretches back to the days when Turkic and Mongol nomads roamed the Central Asian steppe. Now some Kyrgyz officials are agitating for the formal incorporation of the kurultai into the political process.
BAKU -- Youth activists in Azerbaijan say they are coming under pressure over a Facebook campaign calling for a day of antigovernment protests on March 11, RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service reports.
Winston Churchill once famously described the Kremlin as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” Now, an American expert on Russia suggests that “paradox” is an applicable term.
Authoritarian regimes across the Middle East and North Africa are falling apart one by one. Even oil-rich states like Libya, Bahrain, and Oman are not immune to the unrest.
Robert Blake, the US assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, is scheduled to be in Uzbekistan on February 17-18 for the second Annual Bilateral Consultations between the United States and Uzbekistan.
It has been a whirlwind 18 months for Turkey's international reputation. Just a year ago, as Turkish-Israeli relations cooled and Turkish-Iranian relations warmed, Western media portrayed Turkey as a country shifting on its axis toward the Muslim Middle East.
As the unrest in Egypt has continued unfolding, there has been much speculation about the possibility of similar developments occurring in Russia and other countries across the former Soviet Union (FSU).
Moscow is remaining conspicuously silent on the Egyptian crisis as the Kremlin worries about the possibility that the fall of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Cairo could create a ripple effect in the authoritarian-minded states of Russia’s near abroad, analysts say.
