July 10 marked fifteen years since Alyaksandr Lukashenka's victory in the second round of the 1994 presidential election in Belarus. Though he has retained power partly by undemocratic means, repressing opponents and monopolizing the media, his success is nonetheless remarkable and worthy of analysis.In the... MORE

Turkish President Abdullah Gul has taken positive steps towards resolving the Kurdish question. Gul recently invited the Kurdish nationalist Democratic Society Party (DTP) parliamentarian, Selahattin Demirtas to accompany him on his visit to China (NTV, June 24). In addition, eight DTP mayors from Kurdish cities,... MORE

The Russian word "dacha" loosely means "country house." The dacha concept, however, is much broader than that. It personifies both the Russian way of life, and the Russian dream, if there ever was one. Dachas come in different shapes and sizes, ranging from summer wooden... MORE

Celebrations that Beijing has bowed to global pressure and scrapped an order to use filtering software in all personal computers have turned out to be premature. On July 1, a Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) spokesman said that while Beijing had, on June... MORE

The two-day summit in Moscow between U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev failed to attract significant attention among the Central Asian states. The summit was seen in Central Asia as a purely U.S.-Russia affair. The event did not promise any drastic... MORE

The riots in Urumqi, the capital of China's northwestern Xinjiang region populated by ethnic Turkic Uighurs, have resulted in the deaths of at least 156 people, mostly Uighurs, and hundreds wounded to the shock of the Turkish public. Uighur associations accuse the Chinese government of... MORE

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko may return to the idea of disbanding parliament and call snap elections. The opposition Party of Regions (PRU), which has the largest caucus in parliament, has disrupted parliament's work following its leader Viktor Yanukovych's failure to form a grand coalition with... MORE

Along with the crisis and lame-duck situation of state institutions, Moldova's multi-party system has also revealed its deficient substance. The Communist Party, anachronistic as such, has proven far stronger than all the other parties in terms of mass appeal and internal discipline. The party is... MORE

On July 8 Moldova officially enters the campaign for repeat parliamentary elections, barely three months after holding regular quadrennial elections. The repeat elections are scheduled for July 29, to be followed by the election of a new head of state in the new parliament. The... MORE

The June 22 attack on Ingushetia's president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, which left him badly wounded, has sparked a discussion in Russia over what to do next in the North Caucasus as a whole and in Ingushetia in particular. Moscow's initial reaction to the attack on president... MORE