On March 3 Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov announced his decision to endorse the country’s second military doctrine. The revised doctrine will take into account Turkmenistan’s declared neutrality in order to enhance the country’s ability to resist potential threats to its domestic stability. The Turkmen president... MORE

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is due to arrive in Ankara tomorrow (March 7) for a three-day visit, with energy cooperation and the presence of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq expected to top the agenda. However, Turkey has refused to classify the trip... MORE

Vedomosti reported on March 4 that Russia’s president-elect, Dmitry Medvedev, held a victory gathering at his campaign headquarters on the evening of March 2 to which both journalists and “associates who helped him win” were invited. According to the newspaper, the latter group consisted of... MORE

Ukraine’s main opposition force, the Party of Regions (PRU), organized what it called a “congress of people’s deputies of all levels” in the eastern town of Severodonetsk on Saturday, March 1. It discussed topics such as official languages and NATO membership. Almost 3,700 representatives of... MORE

Since March 2003 U.S.-Turkish relations have been strained over Iraq. Now Washington has an additional cause for disquiet, as Turkish-Iranian economic relations go from strength to strength, further weakening Washington’s 1996 Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. Bilateral Turkish-Iranian trade exceeded $8 billion in 2007, up 19.5% over... MORE

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s February 21-22 Moscow visit, nominally for a multilateral Commonwealth of Independent States summit, centered on carefully prepared bilateral talks by the Georgian delegation with outgoing president Vladimir Putin and ministerial counterparts. The visit succeeded in ameliorating the atmosphere of Georgia’s relations... MORE

On the morning of February 12, a MiG-29 fighter jet from the Kazakh Air Force crashed while landing at a military airfield in Almaty region. Just seconds before the plane hit the ground, crew members ejected from the cockpit, but because of the low altitude,... MORE

Israel’s recent military incursion into Gaza has further strained its already troubled relationship with Turkey and highlighted the two countries’ divergent attitudes toward Hamas. For many Turks, the contrast between the muted U.S. reaction to the Israeli raid and its insistence on a rapid curtailment... MORE