October 2010

Key Positions

• The 12 September referendum was seen as a vote of confidence for the ruling AKP, with several constitutional changes ratified by majority. However, a large opposition-voting bloc has emerged and appears to highlight the presence of a vibrant democratic atmosphere in the Republic.


• Kurdish-Turkish reconciliation has faltered in recent weeks, with large portions of the country’s Kurdish areas boycotting the 12 September vote.


• Rumours of a Gulenist-AKP split did not deter cooperation between these two leading Turkish political forces in the run up to the vote. However, with criticism of the AKP increasingly evident within Gulenist circles, there are signs that all is not well in the Islamist camp in Turkey. 


• Turkey and Russia’s Gazprom are attempting to negotiate the sharing of burdens and profits from the Samsun-Ceyan oil pipeline with Italy’s ENI. The American ambassador to Turkey has endorsed the Southern Energy Corridor project, but with the caveat that no Iranian gas runs through the Nabucco gas pipeline.

• October 20, 2010

Russia sought to use a summit starting Monday to cement a greater role in Europe's security and foreign policy _ a shift that France and Germany embrace but that's tougher to sell to the rest of the long-divided continent.

• October 19, 2010

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's deputy Monday said that Iran would be willing to address the dispute over its nuclear programme in forthcoming talks, even though the Iranian leader has so far declined to discuss it with world powers.

• October 19, 2010

Russian troops have withdrawn from a Georgian town which they had occupied since a bitter war between the two countries in 2008.

• October 19, 2010

Iran and Armenia plan to start building two major hydro-electric stations on their border early next year, the energy ministers of the two countries said in Yerevan.

• October 18, 2010

Angela Merkel and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev are due to arrive in the French seaside town of Deauville today for a summit on European security hosted by President Nicolas Sarkozy.

• October 18, 2010

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez visited Belarus on October 16 promising President Alyaksandr Lukashenka that Venezuela could fill Belarus's oil refineries "for the next 200 years."

• October 18, 2010

So – Keston has existed for 40 years – over half my life – and half of that time (exactly 20 years) I’ve  been living in    Oxford. It’s almost unbelievable to reflect that the Berlin Wall came down just after I came to St Edmund Hall, Oxford, with a visiting fellowship: my temporary absence from Keston College seemed to inaugurate the sensational collapse of communism. READ MORE

• October 18, 2010