Russian officials have announced plans to strengthen economic relations with Kyrgyzstan. Speaking at an October 12 session of the intergovernmental Russian-Kyrgyz Commission for Trade, Economic, and Technical Cooperation, Russian atomic energy chief Sergei Kiriyenko announced that bilateral trade is due to reach $1 billion in... MORE

This week Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced that he would chair his newly formed electoral bloc, Ak Zhol, which unites all major pro-presidential political parties. Bakiyev’s bloc will be the frontrunner in the snap parliamentary elections anticipated after the referendum on Sunday, October 21. Al... MORE

Turkey’s Supreme Electoral Board (YSK), yesterday (October 17) voted to go ahead with the planned constitutional referendum on October 21, amid continuing confusion about its legal validity. The constitutional amendments foreseen in the text that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) originally planned to... MORE

On October 8 Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi arrived in Astana, Kazakhstan, to consult with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Prime Minister Karim Masimov in a bid to ease tensions around the Kashagan oilfield. Work at Kashagan was halted over the summer, due to accusations... MORE

The presidents of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan held a Caspian Summit meeting yesterday (October 16) in Tehran. It was the second summit of this type, the first having been held in Ashgabat in 2002. And it was the first visit by a Kremlin... MORE

The blocs of Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense (NUNS) and Yulia Tymoshenko (BYuT) have agreed to form a majority coalition in Ukraine’s newly elected parliament. Tymoshenko should be the new prime minister, and the post of parliament speaker should go to Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, who is the leader... MORE

Last week U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates came to Moscow to discuss Pentagon plans to install ten missile interceptors in Poland, linked to a missile-tracking radar in the Czech Republic, as well as other issues that have complicated relations... MORE

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