Europe

YEREVAN, ARMENIA We are at the brink of a pair of wars, civil and regional, and it is better to speak now. Armenia, that ancient civilization deprived by the tragedies of yore of its capacity for contemporary statecraft, needs immediately to put its house in democratic order. Finally responsible for its own record, it also has legitimate expectations of the international partnership. In this global and so contracted century of ours, where resources and rights often compete for precedence, domestic demeanor and foreign affairs form part of one and the same policy agenda....

Abstract The current post-Soviet bureaucracy in South Caucasian republics, and notably in ethnically diverse Azerbaijan and Georgia, has yet been unable to link ethnicity, territory, and political administration in the process of state-building and democratic development. Bureaucratic evolution from communism to liberalism has simply contributed to the establishment of a handy “electoral democracy” and lucrative economic liberalism for the elites. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, particularistic identities, reinforced differences, and fragmentation of societies have been the dominant characteristics of the South Caucasian republics of Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan (or Trans-Caucasus)....

When I attended former Turkish Ambassador Sukru Elekdag’s denialist talk at Columbia University this spring, I was struck by one of the comments by an audience member. Rather than engage Elekdag in a false debate, the gentleman reminded the audience that Poland is only just now undergoing a painful soul-searching about the roles played by ordinary Poles in the implementation of the Final Solution. He cited the controversy surrounding the publication of Jan T....

President Kocharian dismisses senior ambassador in continuing power consolidation. On Wednesday, April 20, 2000, President Robert Kocharian dismissed Armen Sarkissian, Armenia’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom and the country’s most senior diplomat in Europe. President Kocharian did not provide any explanation for Ambassador Sarkissian’s dismissal. Foreign Ministry sources only said that his sacking was in line with recent efforts to reduce ambassadorial tenures to a “maximum of four years”, but Sarkissian’s sacking reveals a deeper political malaise in Armenia....

After being pursued from Syria to Moscow, Abdullah Ocalan-leader of the PKK, the separatist guerrilla insurgency which seeks autonomy for Turkey’s large Kurdish minority-has fled to Italy. An Italian court has ruled that its country’s constitution prohibits Ocalan from being extradited to Turkey because he would most likely be executed. The State Department and much of the American media have criticized Italy for upholding its constitution while overlooking a far more important consideration: that Turkey has reacted more like a militant Mideast backwater than a NATO ally....

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