The armed forces of Azerbaijan and Turkey conducted two late-spring joint exercises, around Baku (on May 1–3) and in the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan (June 7–11). The goal of these drills was to increase the level of coordination and interoperability between the two militaries, to... MORE

Relations between Turkey and Greece are the most fractious of any pair of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) 29 member countries. Disputes range from contested offshore hydrocarbon exploration to Athens granting political refugee status to two of eight Turkish officers who fled to Greece... MORE

Azerbaijan’s participation in the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which took place in Beijing, on April 25–28, proved successful for Baku, having resulted in a number of important new, non-oil-sector investment projects in the South Caucasus country. Specifically, during the Forum, Azerbaijani... MORE

May 21 is the most unhappy day of the year for the more than half a million Circassians still living in their ancestral homeland and the more than five million who live in forced exile. On that date, in 1864—after a war that lasted more... MORE

Representatives of Turkish, Azerbaijani and Russian railways inked a cooperation memorandum on May 6, 2019, in Ankara, to leverage the potential of the Baku–Tbilisi–Kars (BTK) railway and increase the volume of freight carried along the route (Azertag.az, May 6). “The tripartite cooperation will boost the... MORE

On May 4, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a press release to mark the 25th anniversary of the country’s partnership with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), calling it “one of the important directions” of the Azerbaijan’s “foreign and security policy” (Mfa.gov.az, May... MORE

Russia tries to maintain a finger in every conflict in the Middle East, and President Vladimir Putin seeks to cultivate connections with various parties in multiple quarrels. Presently, however, the Kremlin’s access is being curtailed: Moscow, for instance, cannot find an entry point into the... MORE

Increasingly, one of the defining characteristics of Vladimir Putin’s leadership has been its propensity to push the narrative that the Kremlin has a special relationship with ethnic Russians and Russian speakers abroad, groups that Moscow typically lumps together as “the Russian World” (“Russkiy Mir”). Less... MORE

Last week, Belarus’s President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s visited Turkey (April 16) and, three days later, delivered his annual report to the parliament and the Belarusian people (April 19). Following negotiations with his Turkish counterpart, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Lukashenka pledged to boost bilateral trade from $1... MORE

Moscow wants to have it both ways on the Montreux Convention, which governs naval passage through the Turkish Straits (the Bosporus and the Dardanelles), casting itself as a supporter of this agreement when it works to its advantage but at the same time ignoring and... MORE