Last week Georgia’s former defense minister, Irakli Okruashvili, accused the country’s pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili of large-scale corruption and conspiring to kill Badri Patarkatsishvili, a prominent businessman. Okruashvili claimed that then-prime minister Zurab Zhvaniya, who was found dead in a friend’s apartment in 2005, actually... MORE

Moscow is facing an increasing deficit in bilateral trade with China. Russian industries have found themselves hard-pressed by Chinese competition, and business leaders are calling for the introduction of anti-dumping measures, indicating a looming trade dispute between the two neighbors. Russian officials have long recognized... MORE

An attempt by Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to circumvent the country’s secularist establishment’s opposition to Abdullah Gul becoming president looks set to return to haunt it later this month. Under the current constitution, the president is elected by parliament. In April this... MORE

On October 2 Russia’s Nikolai Bordyuzha, secretary-general of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, told mass media that the CSTO is creating its own “peacekeeping” forces. The member countries are Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Bordyuzha outlined the political and military concepts underlying... MORE

Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov delivered a keynote speech at the UN General Assembly on September 25, indicating that Ashgabat wants to “open up” to the outside world and build a more durable environment to further its economic interests. Praising the role of the UN in... MORE

A recent opinion poll suggests that levels of piety in Turkey have remained virtually unchanged since the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) first came to power in November 2002. According to a study conducted by A&G research in September 2007, 61.4% of adult... MORE

Levon Ter-Petrosian, Armenia’s former president acclaimed in the West for his conciliatory stance on the Karabakh conflict, has rocked the domestic political arena with his first public speech in nearly a decade. Addressing hundreds of supporters in Yerevan on September 21, he described the current... MORE

The Austrian government and the state-controlled OMV energy champion have launched a campaign in European media and with EU authorities in Brussels for a hostile takeover of Hungary’s fully private-owned MOL energy champion. Members of the Austrian government, such as Economics Minister Martin Bartenstein and... MORE