Syrian President Bashar al-Assad arrived in Turkey yesterday (October 16) at the beginning of a four-day visit, in another sign of a deepening rapprochement between the two countries less than a decade after they almost went to war over Damascus’s support for the Kurdistan Workers’... MORE

Less than three months after 20 pro-Kurdish MPs entered the Turkish parliament in the July 22 general election, hopes that their presence in the assembly would create a platform for a solution to the 23-year-old insurgency by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) are already fading... MORE

Interviewed in the inaugural issue of Izvestiya’s local supplement, Izvestiya v Moldove, Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin proposes full demilitarization of Moldova on both banks of the Nistru River. He envisions the “liquidation” of all tanks and armored vehicles, multiple rocket launchers, and artillery of any... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his advisors to draft a detailed plan to develop Sakhalin Island’s infrastructure in the wake of a major earthquake there earlier this year. The situation in Sakhalin "should be radically improved," Putin told a cabinet meeting on October 1... MORE

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) has recently raised its profile by expanding its traditional emphasis on anti-terrorism to include potential peacekeeping activities within the former Soviet region. Moreover, its memorandum of understanding with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), signed on October 6 in Dushanbe,... MORE

Stung by the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s October 10 approval of a resolution characterizing the massacres and deportations of Armenians by the Ottoman authorities during World War I as a genocide, Turkish politicians and journalists are unanimous that Turkey needs to react. But there is... MORE

The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan have finally dashed hopes for a near-term settlement of the Karabakh conflict with their failure to hold yet another, potentially decisive round of negotiations. Armenian President Robert Kocharian publicly declared on October 11 that contrary to the international community’s... MORE

At last week’s energy summit of Baltic, Black Sea, and Caspian countries, hosted by Lithuania in Vilnius (see EDM, October 12), Kazakhstan’s Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Sauat Mynbayev provided a remarkably detailed picture of the country’s oil export policies, both ongoing and projected. Oil... MORE

In less than two weeks, on October 21, Kyrgyzstan will hold a referendum on a new constitution and electoral law. Both documents have been drafted by Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Already it is obvious that the new constitution and electoral law are far from representing... MORE

Presidents and other top officials from the three Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, joined by EU and U.S. officials, attended the Energy Security Conference on October 10-11 in Vilnius. It was the third event of this type, after the energy summits in... MORE