When in 2003 the planners of the Nabucco pipeline named their 31 bcm/y project after the famous Verdi opera, they might not have been able to imagine that almost ten years latter they would still be “singing” in the Southern Gas Corridor “operetta”.  In reality many of them would feel relieved that they are still [...]

In December 2011, the attempt of the French government to pass a bill making it a punishable crime to deny the Armenian genocide, led the Turkish government to recall its Ambassador from Paris, and caused a serious crisis in Turkish – French diplomatic relations. In fact, this is the most recent incident in a very [...]

The results of the May 6 parliamentary elections have heralded the end of an era in its post-dictatorial democratic politics (metapolitefsi) characterized by alternation in power by two catch-all parties, cartelization of government, and heavy statism. The people have expressed a strong aversion to established political elites of the center-left PASOK and the center-right New [...]

It all started with Cyprus announcing its’ intentions to start off shore drilling for natural gas. The drilling was about to take place on the island’s northern borders to Turkey, in an area which is in Cyprus’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), totally under its’ jurisdiction. However the flame between the two countries ignited in 2009, [...]

Mainstream International Relations (IR) thinking (see Realism, Liberalism) holds that the national interest drives states to act the way they do on the international stage. This post-hoc rationalising to explain policy outcomes works successfully enough to be employed by the majority of policy-makers, academics, and analysts to inform their audiences. However, what they are often [...]

Albania has just entered its 100th year of independence. But does the internal political scene offer enough reasons for celebration? The picture is mixed. On the one hand the country has experienced almost two years of bifurcation and polarization of the political space that endangered social stability. The country experienced successive waves of political standoffs, [...]

The Cold War and the early post-Cold War periods were relatively easy to define and comprehend. The first was roughly the struggle between two superpowers forming a bipolar system where almost every state had to choose a side. What followed was a period described by Fukuyama as “The End of History” announcing the triumph of [...]

The decision to set up the UN Peacebuilding Commission, Peacebuilding Support Office and Peacebuilding Fund was taken in September 2005 and bit by bit the new architecture was ready for business in 2006 and into 2007. I have just finished four years on the Fund’s independent Advisory Group, the last two as its chair, so [...]

Ibrahim Kalın, Chief Advisor to the Prime Minister of Turkey, Ankara

A CHANGE is gonna come, as the song goes, in the Nile valley. That’s for sure. Yet its direction, its magnitude, its depth and the durability of whatever will come out of this emphatic performance of Egyptian civil society – ie the political framework – are the issues at stake. Will Egypt follow the steps [...]