On November 12, Istanbul hosted the eighth summit of the Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking States (Turkic Council), attended by the leaders of member states Turkey, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and of observer states Hungary and Turkmenistan (Turkkon.org, November 12). The summit, dedicated this... MORE

The eighth meeting of the World Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples took place in Tartu, Estonia, on June 16–18. These congresses, which are held in a different city every four years, are also political summits, usually attended by presidents of the world’s three Finno-Ugric-majority countries—Finland, Estonia... MORE

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced earlier this year that a number of large infrastructure projects had been launched in the territories liberated from Armenian occupation as a result of the 2020 Second Karabakh War. Importantly, he added that friendly countries and partners would be involved... MORE

Russian analysts fail to recognize that Warsaw no longer views the Intermarium—a historical term that today refers to the lands “in between” Russia and the West and the Baltic and Black Seas—as it did in the 1920s and 1930s but rather conceives it as a... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here.   For almost three years, the Hungarian government has sought to instrumentalize the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and some European Union institutions to pressure Ukraine into legislating certain entitlements for the Hungarian national community in Carpathian Ukraine.... MORE

Kyiv and Budapest have initiated an effort to resolve their differences over the impact of Ukrainian language and education laws on the Hungarian national minority in Ukraine’s Carpathian province (see EDM, June 3). Budapest’s position is based on a sui generis conception of Hungarian national... MORE

Ukraine’s Carpathian province (Zakarpattia Oblast) is comparable in certain key respects with Bessarabia in the Odesa province (see EDM, May 28). Zakarpattia is another outlying territory where Kyiv’s influence is weak, local power brokers well-entrenched, the infrastructure desolate, and ethnic minorities—in this case the local... MORE

The parliament of Bulgaria has adopted a declaration criticizing Ukraine’s policy toward the Bulgarian minority in Odesa province (see EDM, May 26). This move might seem to indicate that Bulgaria is about to emulate Hungary or Romania, each of which, in its own way (Hungary... MORE

This past month, Azerbaijan hosted two large inter-governmental gatherings: the 7thSummit of the Cooperation Council of the Turkic-Speaking States (Turkic Council), on October 15, and the 18th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), on October 25 (Turkkon.org, October 15; Turksoy.org, October 16; Azernews.az, October 25).... MORE

The term “political technology” prevalent across the former Soviet space, might perhaps be best described as “a euphemism for what is by now a highly developed industry of political manipulation.” The Kremlin has used this tool widely in Russia as well as in other former... MORE