Get a .pdf version of this report. Throughout the Cold War, Turkey remained a staunchly secular Western ally, serving as a NATO buttress against the Soviet Union. But in the aftermath of the November 2002 elections that brought the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) to power, its foreign policy orientation has undergone a gradual shift. The AKP initially emphasized Turkey’s European ambitions, doing more than any previous government to move Turkey closer to EU accession. Yet in recent years, the AKP’s drive for EU membership appears to have lost momentum, while the previous domestic consensus on the country’s [...]
The more the EU digs into the outbreak of last August’s Russia-Georgia War, the worse things look for Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili. According to Der Spiegel, the paper trail seems to be leading back to Order No. 2, from Aug. 7, which the Russians claim to have intercepted, and which allegedly spoke of re-establishing “constitutional order” in the region. The formula was repeated word for word by a Georgian general, also on Aug. 7. Georgia, meanwhile, refuses to turn over the document in question, calling it a “state secret.” Meanwhile, a few weeks back I wondered whether the lack of [...]
Setting aside the thorny question of legal sovereignty, here’s a thought that’s been percolating in my head over the past couple days: Does the lack of any local opposition, whether armed or otherwise, to the Russian military presence in Abkhazia and South Ossetia lend any legitimacy to the de facto disaggregation of the two breakawy provinces? Granted, Russian forces had already been there for over a decade as peacekeepers, and the “invasion” was not accompanied by regime change. But at a time when both American counterinsurgency doctrine and American diplomacy is increasingly engaging on the local level in Iraq and [...]
