Moscow is lining up the member countries of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) -- Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan -- in a Russia-led bloc within the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. This bloc has emerged in the run-up to the... MORE

Insofar as its words still matter (admittedly an increasingly dubious premise), the OSCE seems set to defer to Russia at the year-end meeting in late November in Madrid regarding the post-Soviet unresolved conflicts. The political declaration, drafted by the Spanish chairmanship, reflects Russia’s overall position... MORE

Amid fading hopes of EU membership, there are increasing signs that the Turkish authorities are tightening restrictions on freedom of speech. A new set of regulations for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) published in the Turkish Official Gazette on November 1, 2007, makes it compulsory for... MORE

Almost all of Kyrgyzstan’s political parties that registered for the parliamentary elections on December 16 have now identified their top five candidates. Each political party had to come up with a list of 100 candidates for their official party lists. The top five slots tend... MORE

On November 5 Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev arrived in Damascus for a three-day visit. Both Nazarbayev and his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al-Assad, seemed satisfied with the talks, which covered investments, bilateral trade, and political ties. Beset by chronic economic and political troubles in the turbulent... MORE

Monday, November 18, leaders from Greece, Turkey, the United States, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Italy will officially launch a new Turkey-Greece pipeline project along the Maritza River. The 300-kilometer-long natural gas pipeline will carry Azerbaijani gas to Europe, bypassing Russia. According to Turkish Energy Ministry officials,... MORE

Ethnic tension has increased in Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula as the authorities move to tackle the problem of Crimean Tatar squatters occupying local plots of land. In early November, Tatars were forcibly evicted from two construction sites that, according to the Crimean authorities and the local... MORE

Armenia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) has set the date for the upcoming presidential election, which will seal the end of President Robert Kocharian’s ten-year rule. The vote, scheduled for February 19, is increasingly shaping up as a two-horse race between Kocharian’s long-time chief lieutenant, Prime... MORE