Dr Beniamin Poghosyan
Deputy Director, Institute for National Strategic Studies, MOD, Armenia
Executive Director, Political Science Association of Armenia

The Karabakh conflict negotiation process is in an obvious stalemate after the apparent failure of the Kazan summit which took place last June. Three-years of mediation efforts by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accompanied by efforts of the Minsk Group’s two other Co-chair-state-leaders have delivered no results. The much anticipated breakthrough which should have taken place at the Kazan trilateral summit was transformed into a half page statement with no concrete steps and decisions. President Medvedev’s further efforts to move the process through bilateral meetings with Azerbaijani and Armenian Presidents did not bring any meaningful results. Meanwhile, the situation in the front line is deteriorating mainly due to Azerbaijani snipers deadly attacks and retaliatory actions of Karabakh Armed Forces. READ MORE

By Naim Ameur,
Senior Manager, Prime Ministry of Tunisia
EGF Affiliated Expert on Maghreb politics

The Particularity of the Libyan Revolution

The success of their Tunisian and Egyptian neighbors in their peaceful revolutions encouraged the Libyan people to end the dictatorship of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi who kept his country underdeveloped and deprived of the natural resource wealth during 42 years. READ MORE

by Mehmet Ogutcu,
Expert in global energy security matters

The Turkish leadership has committed itself to a tough position on Israel, Cyprus and Syria, and any backtracking or sign of weakness will seriously affect its credibility at home, with regional partners, the “Arab Street” and other major global powers, as well as high stakes involved in the Eastern Mediterranean. This represents a policy of principle, consistent with the values and goals the government pursues, but is also a risky one, which if not well managed may lead to some undesirable hot confrontation. The power comes with responsibility if it will be effectively harnessed.READ MORE

by Marat Terterov,
EGF Director

Although 2011 is still far from over, it is already likely to go down in history as the year of the so called ‘Arab Spring’. 2011 will be remembered as the year when Arab populations threw down the gauntlet to their stagnating regimes, revising their traditional authoritarian power model and at long last commencing the transition to democracy. So too it is time to consider revising the European Union’s relationship with Russia, which has stagnated rather badly in recent years. Since the “big bang” enlargement of the EU in 2004, Moscow’s relations with Brussels have been increasingly characterised by tension (if not crisis) in their energy ties and failure to reach agreement in many areas of common strategic interest. In June of this year, the bi-annual EU-Russia Summit, held in Nizhny Novgorod, was dubbed as the ‘Vegetable Summit’ in the international press as Moscow and Brussels exchanged blows over the Russian ban on vegetable imports from the EU following the E.coli health scare in Germany. READ MORE

Key Points for Policy Makers:

• The crisis in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is demonstrating that it is high time for Brussels to re- think its strategy towards the countries of the south bank of the Mediterranean
• EU political initiatives in MENA have often focused on democratisation capacity building, when most of the grievances which sparked this year’s revolts on the Arab street have been predominantly socio-economic in character
• Brussels needs to devise effective mechanisms to overcome divisiveness in the narrow priorities of individual member states if it is to become a credible force in the sphere of international crisis management. It also needs to improve its early warning crisis prevention and detection instruments – or develop such capacities
• MENA remains clouded by substantial uncertainty. There is no guarantee that democracy will emerge in the recently “liberated” MENA countries. However, Turkey might be able to offer such countries a credible model of democratic growth.
• Any major disruption in the supply of energy from the Middle East to international markets, as a result of the ongoing protests and civil conflict in the region, is unlikely
• A general realignment may be starting to take place in the Caspian and Central Asian energy markets: Russian may be losing its grip over the region

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By Eugen Iladi, Independent Expert

The dramatic events in Tunisia and Egypt, where long-serving presidents have been ousted within weeks of each other by “street-led people’s revolts”, are inspiring demonstrators in other Muslim countries to demand structural political change. Libya is currently gripped by deep political crisis, as is the tiny Gulf Monarchy of Bahrain, whilst revolts are ongoing in Yemen, Morocco and Iran. Furthermore, Algeria seems to be one of the next countries possibly hanging in the balance, where the prospect of regime change must now be a question of serious concern. READ MORE

February 21, 2011

The year 2011 has commenced with unprecedented levels of political turmoil, violence and tension in the Middle East. While this will not necessarily come as a surprise to readers of our previous research on the region, the fact that the Tunisian and Egyptian presidents have been dismissed from power barely within weeks of one another as a result of wide-scale street demonstrations in these two countries, clearly implies that the region has once again entered into a “game breaking” situation. As violence and further protests continue to spread rapidly across the region, the key question of concern to governments, investors and Middle Eastern ruling elites is now which regime is likely to fall next ? Despite the often overlooked heterogeneities of the region, the dramatic events already having taken place in Tunisia and Egypt in the first weeks of 2010 have inspired a domino effect of protests. Demonstrations of varying degree of magnitude are presently engulfing Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Iran. They have also taken place in Jordan, while smaller scale demonstrations were planned in Kuwait. While other states across the Middle East are reporting less protest activity, the threat that the Egyptian-Tunisian contagion is posing to the region as a whole cannot not be underestimated. READ MORE