The decades-long armed conflict between Turkey and the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan - PKK) has witnessed a number of major policy shifts by key participants in the past year. The greatest such shift thus far – one in the “sea-change”... MORE

On October 17 in Moscow, Gazprom president Alexei Miller conferred in the presence of the Romanian ambassador with the general managers of Romania’s Transgaz and Romgaz companies,. Gazprom’s communiqué implied, and subsequent leaks to the Russian media corroborated, that the Russian side proposed including Romania... MORE

Like the political crisis in the spring of 2007, the crisis unfolding since September has placed great strains on law enforcement agencies (see EDM, June 1, 2007). On April 2, 2007, and now again on October 8, the president disbanded parliament. In the spring of... MORE

On October 9 Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko disbanded parliament and scheduled an early parliamentary election for December 7. This was the result of the breakup of the ruling coalition of Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense bloc (NUNS) and the bloc of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko (BYT)... MORE

With President Viktor Yushchenko’s disbanding of the Ukrainian parliament on October 8 and legal squabbles over new elections, the continuing Ukrainian-Russian negotiations over 2009 gas supplies for Ukraine appear to have taken a back seat to the political drama being acted out in Kyiv. How... MORE

The global financial crisis has not affected Ukraine directly as its stock market is underdeveloped, and mortgage loans do not play a major role in the local economy. But the consequences of the crisis should have a significant impact on the local economy, which depends... MORE

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s working visit to Washington in late September left many observers wondering what, if anything, the visit had accomplished. The apparent purpose of the trip was to seek greater security assurances for Ukraine from the United States and gauge the level of... MORE

The judicial investigation into a shadowy ultranationalist group known to the Turkish media as Ergenekon has become increasingly characterized by a mixture of incompetence, paranoia, politicization and willful disinformation. Supporters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi - AKP) in the... MORE

After the parliamentary electionscin Belarus on September 28, both President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and his close ally, Lidziya Yarmoshyna, Chairperson of the Central Election Commission, have stated that they expect the EU to lift sanctions against Belarus’s leaders and develop closer relations. On the face of... MORE