The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst

On January 19, President Dmitri Medvedev finally made good on his pledge to invest one particular official with ‘personal responsibility’ for overseeing the situation in the Northern Caucasus. Alexander Khloponin is the president’s plenipotentiary representative to the ‘North Caucasus Federal District’, a new jurisdictional entity created by Medvedev, and has also been awarded the rank of a deputy prime minister in the federal government. Given that Medvedev has identified an underperforming economy as the main reason for the instability in the region, how does the new envoy propose to stimulate the economic situation there? 

The opening of the first segment of the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline last month is only one in a series of recent events in Caspian Sea basin energy developments. It signifies Turkmenistan’s first real moves to break its dependence upon Gazprom and the Russian state for international sales of its energy resources. These developments are to the detriment of Europe, which remains dependent upon Russia and Turkey as transit countries and has been unable to push forward the implementation of its Nabucco pipeline project.

Established as a firm presence in the information space in Kazakstan, the new media is increasingly embracing Western-style entertainment and social networking and even Western media content. Though Kazakhstan still lags behind many countries in terms of the number of internet users per capita, the arrival of smart phones, twitting, and file and photo sharing over the mobile-phone networks has helped to change the media landscape, making new media content accessible even in small cities and towns. These changes have intensified the discourse within the country about the future of the media culture: will Kazakhstan’s media be able to compete with the forces of globalization?

January was marked with events that further complicated the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations. The ruling of the Constitutional Court of Armenia was the central event. Although the ruling supported the Turkish-Armenian protocols on normalized relations, improving their chances of being ratified, it led to strong Turkish criticism. In the preamble of its ruling, the Court presented its interpretation of the two documents, once more stressing the viewing of the Armenian side on the limits of their applications. The Turkish side accused Yerevan of attempting to revise the documents.