Almaty, the cultural and business center of Kazakhstan, celebrated the spring festival Navruz throughout the city, including a series of concerts attracting thousands of residents and tourists to Astana Square in front of the old parliament building. With balloons for sale by the hundreds, village elders dressed in traditional Kazakh costumes and games of tug-a-war in the crowd, groups of musicians and dancers representing various ethnic and national groups, including Chechen, Cossack, Azeri and Russian, performed throughout the day.
Others gathered in front of the old Academy of Sciences building for camel rides and traditional food including plov (rice pilaf), baursaki (fried dough), shashlik (skewers of grilled mutton) and nauriz köje (yogurt soup made with seven ingredients).
At Republic Square, families strolled with children, admiring the statues dedicated to famous Kazakhs or placing their hands into a bronze book containing the palm print of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and the phrase "Choose and Be Happy." On the top of Kok-Tobe, reached by a cable car from the city, couples embraced on terraces with views across the hazy city as the sun set for the day.
Inside a container truck a butcher slices and chops cuts of pork to be sold at an outdoor stall at a market in front of the old Kazakh parliament building in Almaty on March 19.
Members of Armenia's ruling Prosperous Armenia Party hand out roses to women on the streets of the capital Yerevan in recognition of International Women's Day.
Anahit Hayrapetyan is a freelance photojournalist based in Yerevan.
Armenians celebrate St. Sargis' day on Feb. 19 in Yerevan's St. Sargis church and in the city's Lover's Park. St. Sargis Day is celebrated on a Saturday sometime around 63 days before Easter and marks the feast day of St. Sargis, the patron saint of young love. Unmarried Armenian women eat a piece of salty bread, ideally after fasting all day, in the hope of dreaming about their future husband. Tradition says the man who brings them water in the dream will be the man they marry.
Anahit Hayrapetyan is a freelance photojournalist based in Yerevan.
Armenians in the city of Echmiadzin celebrate Trndez, an orthodox ceremony of purification in the Armenian Catholic Church and the Apostolic Church. The celebration, dating from pre-Christian times, involves people jumping over fires and coals and usually begins the evening of Feb. 13.
Anahit Hayrapetyan is a freelance photojournalist based in Yerevan.
Several thousand supporters of Armenian television channel ALM gather on the steps of the Matenadaran Manuscript Museum in the capital Yerevan on Jan. 19, to protest against the threatened closure of the television station. The potential shut down was the result of a controversial December decision by the country's National Commission on Television and Radio (HRAH), which handed a new broadcasting license to Yerevan TV, a small pro-government broadcaster, rather than the popular and independent ALM.
Tigran Karapetich, populist owner of the broadcaster and leader of a small opposition political party, addressed the crowd of mostly older Armenians, speaking mainly about social issues and government corruption.
Anahit Hayrapetyan is a freelance photojournalist based in Yerevan.
About 100 members of the Georgian Communist Party gather on December 21 in Joseph Stalin's hometown Gori to celebrate the former Soviet leader's 131st birthday. During the rally the party members, who arrived from several regions throughout Georgia, also protested against the dismantling of Stalin's monument on Gori's main square and demanded its immediate restoration.
The Georgian government took the monument down on June 21, 2010, and announced that it would be moved to the yard of Stalin's museum in Gori, located within a kilometer from town's main square. Since then, the present location of the monument, as well as the possible date of its restoration remains publicly unknown.
Temo Bardzimashvili is a freelance photojournalist based in Tbilisi.
Three bakers in the Tarlabasi district of Istanbul had been working only with the light from the bakery oven for an hour before they got a new lightbulb.
Jonathan Lewis is a freelance photojournalist based in Istanbul.
