Latest Eurasia Daily Monitor Articles
ERDOGAN INADVERTENTLY REIGNITES HEADSCARF DEBATE
An off-the-cuff response by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to a question by a journalist has unexpectedly reignited the long-running debate in Turkey over the Islamic headscarf by triggering a furious reaction from Turkish secularists. The headscarf has long been one of the main... MORE
NEW UKRAINIAN PRIME MINISTER LAUNCHES STATE AUDITS, SAVINGS PAYOUTS
Having barely formed her Cabinet of Ministers, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko got down to business. She resumed several campaigns that she had launched when she was prime minister in 2005 but were dismissed by her successors as too “populist.” In addition to starting to reshape... MORE
YEREVAN REPORTS DOUBLE-DIGIT GDP FOR 2007
Armenia’s economy appears to have expanded at a double-digit rate for the sixth consecutive year in 2007 despite the unresolved conflict over Karabakh and the resulting high cost of the country’s transport communication with the outside world. Official statistics show its gross domestic product increasing... MORE
AKHMETOV SIGNALS KAZAKHSTAN’S NEW CONFIDENCE
Kazakhstan’s armed forces face a new shake up in 2008, designed to facilitate progress toward greater efficiency. Military reform in Kazakhstan has been underway for several years, resulting in structural changes and other, more targeted, reforms linked with manpower, such as “professionalizing” a proportion of... MORE
SUDANESE PRESIDENTIAL VISIT RENEWS SUSPICIONS ABOUT IDEOLOGICAL DIMENSION TO TURKEY’S FOREIGN POLICY
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is scheduled to pay an official visit to Turkey. The upcoming visit has renewed suspicions that the foreign policy of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is partly driven by ideological considerations, particularly feelings of Muslim solidarity. Since the... MORE
MURDER OF KABARDINO-BALKARIA LAW-ENFORCER: ANOTHER TURN IN A VICIOUS CIRCLE?
The head of Kabardino-Balkaria’s regional anti-organized crime directorate Colonel Anatoly Kyarov, was shot to death along with his bodyguard on the evening of January 12 when their car came under fire near the headquarters of the republic’s drug control department in Nalchik, the republican capital.... MORE
WILL MEDVEDEV’S ASCENSION SOLVE GAZPROM’S PROBLEMS?
As Russia wraps up seasonal festivities with the Old Style New Year on January 13, it is beginning to acknowledge changes in the economic climate that are caused by a peculiar combination of over-heating and under-investment. The most acute symptom of this complex malady is... MORE
GEORGIA BETWEEN RULE OF LAW AND THE “GEOPOLITICS OF RUSTAVELI AVENUE”
On January 13 Georgia’s Central Electoral Commission (CEC) approved and released the final, official results of the January 5 pre-term presidential election. The process took longer than expected, largely because of contentious counting of disputed votes from a number of precincts, amounting to decimal points... MORE
TURKISH ALEVIS SPURN OVERTURES FROM AKP
In a sign of their continuing suspicions of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), representatives of Turkey’s Alevi religious minority spurned what the government claimed was an olive branch by boycotting a banquet organized for them in Ankara on January 11. No reliable statistics... MORE
MORE THAN 80,000 INGUSH DENY THEY VOTED IN STATE DUMA ELECTIONS
Following Russia’s State Duma elections last December 2, the United States and some European government said the elections had been neither free nor fair, and Golos, Russia’s only independent vote monitoring group, reported that they had been accompanied by “mass violations” across the country (Independent... MORE