In the past couple of months, news about Turkey has been littered with reports about the spasms of violence between Turkish troops and militants of the terrorist Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK) in the rugged, mountainous eastern part of the country. After a decade of cease-fire, old hatreds have resurfaced with a vengeance, costing the lives of more than 250 soldiers in the past year, and 10 soldiers and 29 Kurdish guerillas this month alone. Mothers and wives kneeling and wailing over their sehit (martyr) sons draped in the Turkish flag have become regular images on Turkish television screens and in [...]
Sapurmurat Niyazov, the Kim Jong-il of Central Asia, left quite a legacy: a crumbling infrastructure, egregious human rights abuses, rumors of mass starvation outside the capital, and a personality cult capped by a funny name. Turkmenbashi, the father of all Turkmen, left some pretty big shoes to fill when he died last December. As a result, Gurbanguli Berdymuhkammedov, Turkmenistan’s second dictator and the world’s most powerful dentist, faces some serious choices. The first is how closely he’ll stick to his election promise of keeping Niyazov’s policies in place. There are many encouraging signs that President Berdymuhkammedov will open his country [...]
Whatever the fate of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the strained relations between the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK) over this and other security issues make clear the need for both countries to take action to reinvigorate their bilateral defense alliance. During the past decade, relations between South Korea and the United States have deteriorated considerably. South Koreans appreciate having an American defense guarantee, both for helping them deter a possible North Korean attack and for enhancing their leverage vis-à-vis China and Japan. Yet, they oppose American military threats against North Korea and U.S. efforts to isolate [...]
