As close political collaborators for over a decade, President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan built the Justice and Development Party into Turkey’s dominant political force. But now, the two men appear poised to part ways.
While a struggle is intensifying in Georgia between Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili and President Mikheil Saakashvili over investigations and arrests of former senior government officials, a battle over the nomination of the country’s top military officer appears to be resolved.
Kyrgyzstan, the closest thing Central Asia has to a working democracy, just held municipal elections. The results are generating tension within the national governing coalition, fueling complaints that new voices are being stifled and causing some observers to raise the specter of a possible repeat of recent history.
