On April 18 the Kyrgyz parliament voted to increase the government’s right to privatize public economic sites. The divide in the parliament on this legislative act was obvious: President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s party Ak Zhol voted in favor of privatization, while two opposition parties, the Kyrgyz... MORE

Until a decade ago, Turkey’s interest in the Western hemisphere was focused almost exclusively on its relationship with the United States. Over the past 10 years, however, Ankara has grown increasingly interested in Central and Latin America, even though its trade with the region is... MORE

Belarus has attracted international attention recently for all the wrong reasons: attacks on demonstrators, arbitrary arrests, searches of apartments of independent journalists, and the refusal to release political prisoners, particularly Alyaksandr Kazulin, the former Rector of Belarusian State University. But how does the population view... MORE

While the Mongolian People’s Republic shed its socialist Communist political straitjacket in 1990, the Mongolian “ulus” (nation) has remained divided by geography as a part of the new “Great Game,” with independent Mongolia remaining heavily under Russian influence, while the Peoples Republic of China retains... MORE

On April 17 the organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) held its 18th meeting of members’ foreign ministers in Kiev, Ukraine. The only countries to send their foreign ministers to the meeting, however, were Turkey and Ukraine. All of the other BSEC 10... MORE

With the NATO problem deferred and only two weeks to go in the office, President Putin has shifted his attention to a region that is also a major point of U.S. attention--the Middle East. Monitoring the preparations for President George W. Bush's visit to the... MORE

The Kremlin apparently viewed the Eastern Siberia Pacific Oil Pipeline (ESPO) as a major vehicle to promote faster growth of Russia's Far Eastern regions. However, the major energy project appears to be taking longer than expected. Earlier this month, the first completed 238-kilometer section of... MORE

On April 18 Tulay Tugcu, the former head of Turkey’s Constitutional Court, issued a statement refuting allegations that the Turkish military had pressured the court by threatening to stage a coup unless it annulled the results of the parliamentary vote to appoint the country’s next... MORE