Didn’t know NATO was in the personal-protection business? Neither did NATO.
Istanbul vendors selling watches, knives and batteries from folding tables are offering a product bound to surprise the NATO officials who regularly visit the city: pressurized canisters of “American Style NATO Super-Paralisant.”
Also known as pepper spray, the 40-milliliter bottles of “CS-Gas Silliarde” claim to be made in Germany. But the G.I. Joe-look is 100-percent American.
It’s unclear how much demand there is for the spray in a city where the crime rate is relatively low.
One merchant in an underpass in the Eminönü neighborhood said he first saw the product – which he sells at the competitive price of 6 Turkish lira (roughly $3.50) – about two years ago. He laughed when told the slogan on the carton, which reads “Body Protect Aerosol Type,” could be misunderstood as a different type of defense: We were thinking deodorant.
But don’t be alarmed: NATO isn't arming the Turkish population. A spokesman in Brussels confirmed to EurasiaNet.org that the spray is “not a NATO product.”
Worshippers wait outside the Russian Orthodox Church in Bishkek for the acclaimed Tikhvin Icon of Our Lady to arrive from Russia. Believed to work miracles, the icon is visiting Kyrgyzstan for the first time, traveling across the country from July 9 to 13.
David Trilling is EurasiaNet's Central Asia editor.
A demonstrator hoists a banner with images of Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and the late Turkish communist leader Hikmet Kıvılcımlı to mark May 1, International Workers' Day.
Tens of thousands of people, including communists, Kemalists and members of labor unions, thronged central Istanbul's Taksim Square to celebrate the national holiday.
Istanbul's annual May Day rallies have been peaceful in recent years, though many in the crowd today remembered clashes 35 years ago that left at least 34 dead.
David Trilling is EurasiaNet's Central Asia editor.
Girls milk cows at Kyrgyzstan's Song-Kul lake, where they migrate with their families every year to take advantage of the lush jailoo, or summer pasture. The lake sits at 3000 meters (almost 10,000 feet).
David Trilling is EurasiaNet's Central Asia editor.
Photographers gathered in front of the Georgian Interior Ministry office in Tbilisi at 10 p.m. on June 8 to rally against the continued detention of four Georgian photojournalists.
Georgian police initially arrested five photojournalists a day earlier: among them Irakli Gedenidze, the personal photographer for Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili; his wife Natia Gedenidze, a local newspaper photographer; Shahk Aivazov, an Associated Press photojournalist; Zurab Kurtsikidze, a staff photojournalist for the European Pressphoto Agency; and Gia Abdaladze, a photographer with the Georgian Foreign Ministry.
A few hours after his detention, AP photographer Aivazov was released. The other four have since been accused of spying for "a foreign country."
The government classified the investigation as top secret, thereby closing the case to outside scrutiny. As the photographers were being interrogated inside the ministry office, their protesting colleagues demanded the transparency of the case and the release of the detainees.
Temo Bardzimashvili is a freelance photojournalist based in Tbilisi.
Dushanbe celebrities, Talabsho Sheikhov and his bear Maria wander Tajikistan's capital earning money by charging for photos. Sheikhov, 80, says he found Mariya, an orphan, 17 years ago in the Pamir Mountains and raised her with a bottle, sometimes offering her human milk. Today she eats Snickers and shashlik (grilled meat) and, while sometimes a little frightened by the crowds of onlookers, appears to have a special relationship with Sheikhov.
David Trilling is EurasiaNet's Central Asia editor.
The number of Muslim worshipers in Tajikistan is clearly growing. Here, scores of men who could not fit inside Dushanbe's main Haji Yacoub Mosque during Friday prayers brave 104-degree Fahrenheit heat (40 C) in the courtyard. The mosque rolls out "collective" prayer mats to accommodate them.
David Trilling is EurasiaNet's Central Asia editor.
A taxi driver and traffic inspector negotiate over an infraction on Dushanbe's main drag. Police are stationed on Rudaki Avenue approximately every 50 meters to direct traffic when a dignitary passes. Most of the time, however -- such as here, seen through the back window of the taxi -- they are free to interpret the law. (Unless, of course, one has a special number plate.)
David Trilling is EurasiaNet's Central Asia editor.
Families celebrate National Unity Day at Komsomol Lake in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on June 27. The holiday marks the peace treaty that ended Tajikistan's 1992-1997 civil war.
David Trilling is EurasiaNet's Central Asia editor.
A worker tears down a fountain in central Dushanbe, Tajikistan. He says it will be replaced with a "better one" before Tajikistan's twentieth anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union this September.
David Trilling is EurasiaNet's Central Asia editor.
