Field Reports

The Azerbaijani interior forces arrested over 100 anti-governmental protesters during a two-day rally in Baku inspired by the Middle East uprisings. Despite the crackdown, activists believe that it is just a start and that street protests will continue.

On March 5, Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents Serzh Sargsyan and Ilham Aliyev held a meeting in Sochi. The Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev acted as a mediator. The meeting was the eighth trilateral one since the presidents met in Russian Meindorf on October 2008, and was initially welcomed by observers as a sign that the negotiation process is still alive. The two presidents signed a statement in Sochi stating that they “emphasized the importance of their regular contacts on issues related to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement and agreed to continue these in the same format to complement the work of the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group”.

On his two-day working trip to the South Kazakhstan region on March 10 and 11, 2011, President Nazarbayev sparked controversy by saying that it was unacceptable for Muslim women in Kazakhstan to wear hijabs and niqabs. Nazarbayev particularly warned against the spread of such practices in public places, such as schools and universities, where younger people are especially prone, according to him, to the “imposed” kinds of religious teaching, not the ones Kazakhstan has always been faithful to. Earlier on that day, Kazakhstan’s President visited Turkestan, a city famous for its holy places that are regarded local cultural treasures by Central Asian followers of Islam.

Less than two months after reporting that militant commander Alovuddin Davlatov (more commonly known as Ali Bedaki or Bedak) was killed in battle, Tajik security agencies are confronted with a video that allegedly undermines the official account of the rebel’s death. The four-minute mobile phone video circulating in Tajikistan and posted on YouTube shows uniformed men, supposedly members of Tajik law enforcement agencies, questioning a bearded man whom they address as Ali Bedaki. The latter sits half-naked in the back seat of a car, with a gun pointed at him, and appears very humiliated.

The Turkish Prime Minister paid an official visit to Kyrgyzstan to demonstrate his political and economic support as the country faces hardships after last year’s government change. Many experts believe that the visit opens a new page in the relationship between Kyrgyzstan and Turkey and provides a special place for Turkey in Kyrgyzstan’s foreign policy. However, others contend that Turkish active economic involvement in Kyrgyzstan may not coincide with Russian interests, and may thus lead to cooler relations between Bishkek and Moscow.

Several officials on all levels of government have been fired and hundreds of state employees have been subjected to administrative charges since Azerbaijan’s authorities commenced an anticorruption campaign a month ago. While ministries are competing over which one has punished the largest number of employees for abuse of authority, ordinary people are discussing how far the anticorruption campaign will go.

An American delegation headed by the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake arrived in Uzbekistan on February 17-18 to take part in annual bilateral consultations on political and economic issues. On February 18, representatives of ten leading American companies led by the head of the American-Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce and Uzbek officials participated in a business forum. The agenda of the consultations included bilateral cooperation in the political, trade-economic, investment, cultural-humanitarian and other spheres. The parties also exchanged opinions on problems of international and regional security of common interest. Blake summarized the results of the consultations at the press conference that took place at the U.S. Embassy in Uzbekistan.

The clouds of suspense around the issue of a national referendum for the extension of President Nazarbayev’s mandate have been finally cleared. The Constitutional Court decided that the proposed constitutional amendments were illegitimate as they do not explicitly specify in which way the suggested referendum could be fitted into the existing legal framework.

On January 20, the process of evicting internally displaced persons (IDPs) from temporary accommodation in Tbilisi was resumed after being halted for several months, following sharp criticism from local and international organizations.