On September 10 General Motors, partly owned by the U.S. government, changed its position and allowed its ailing German subsidiary, Opel, to be "rescued" by a Kremlin-controlled consortium. The German government strongly pressed for the Russian solution in preference to an American one. The issue... MORE

China’s economic ascent since the early 2000s has generated more equanimity than the fear its military rise caused in the mid-1990s, which led to accelerated concerns in the international community about a “China threat.”  While the Chinese military continues to modernize and its defense budget... MORE

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev received German Chancellor Angela Merkel on August 14 at his Sochi residence. This meeting accelerated the implementation of qualitatively new economic projects in key industrial sectors, agreed barely one month earlier in Munich by the two leaders in the framework of... MORE

In Sochi, Merkel reaffirmed with greater emphasis the German government's decision to hand over the Opel plants to a Russian-dominated consortium, despite an alternative U.S.-backed offer. The government in Berlin had taken a preliminary decision in Russia's favor in late May, although the U.S. government... MORE

One retired Turkish ambassador told Jamestown that the latest energy deals signed between Turkey and Russia are as promising as the 1970 agreement on establishing an iron and steel plant in Iskenderun in southern Turkey, with the assistance of Soviet technology. Turkey and Russia, despite... MORE

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, accompanied by Zefer Caglayan, the state minister responsible for foreign trade, visited Iraq on August 11, as part of an emerging strategic dialogue between Ankara and Baghdad. Prior to departing for Baghdad, Davutoglu held a lengthy press briefing and outlined the... MORE

Hungarian MOL's oil-producing joint venture in Russia, ZMB, has gained a respite from the Russian authorities' threat to revoke its production license. ZMB (Zapadno-Malobalyk), a parity joint venture of MOL with Russneft in western Siberia's Khanty-Mansi district, had recently been warned by Russia's mineral resources... MORE

The Russian government began insisting in late July that gas from the Sakhalin-1 project must not be sold to China by its partners, including ExxonMobil, but instead diverted to meet the growing demand in Russia's Far East provinces. Many observers were shocked by what they... MORE

The Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) released its June figures on the industrial production index, which gave mixed signals concerning the influence of the economic crisis on the Turkish economy (www.turkstat.gov.tr, Press Release, August 10). The figures show that although industrial output is still down from... MORE

On July 31 the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, formally launched the construction of the 1,800 kilometer Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok natural gas pipe-line (ITAR-TASS, July 31). This new strategic pipeline is designed to supply natural gas to the population of the Russian Far East, so far deprived... MORE