WHY AND HOW DOES SWITZERLAND CARE ABOUT CENTRAL ASIA? SWISS FOREIGN POLICY TOWARDS CENTRAL ASIA

Franz von Daeniken

Geographically, Switzerland is far from Central Asia, the region comprising Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. It has no historical ties with Central Asia, and the Central Asian communities in Switzerland are of no significant size. Nonetheless, today, Switzerland is an important partner of the Central Asian states. What then has prompted it to developed a special partnership with the countries of a region as distant as Central Asia? 

ROAD MAP TO WHERE?

Professor Sa'eb Erakat

On April 9, 2003 President George W. Bush became the President of the Republic of Iraq and at the same time the President of the United States of America.  When he went to the Sharm El Sheikh Summit along with President Mubarak of Egypt, King Abdullah of Jordan, King Hamad of Bahrain, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi-Arabia and Prime Minister Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, did he go in his capacity as the President of Iraq or the President of the US?. ...

ALBANIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY AND ISLAM IN THE POST-COMMUNIST ER A

Aydin Babuna

The Albanians were the last nation to develop their own nationalism in the Balkans, and the emergence of this Albanian nationalism was marked by the establishment in 1878 of the Prizren League. The League's main aim, which was initially supported by the Ottomans, was to protect the lands inhabited by the Albanians from the neighboring countries, but the League was later suppressed by the Ottomans themselves as soon as it began to challenge Ottoman authority in the area. The conflict between the Albanians and the Ottomans was to continue until the Balkan Wars. ...

REORGANIZING SECURITY: NEW GLASNOST AND PERESTROIKA IN GEORGIA

Robert L. Larsson

Question: How is Georgian foreign and security policy formed? Answer: officials read President Shevardnadze's ‘Monday Morning Interview' in the newspaper and take action accordingly.  This joke is common in Georgia. As with most jokes, it has an element of truth, maybe not so much concerning Georgia's policy-making, but concerning the way people perceive policy-making.  Additionally, it illustrates the incoherence of Georgia's security policy and inefficient communication within the political establishment. 

TURKEY'S APPROACH TOWARDS THE EU: VIEWS FROM WITHIN

Dr. Zuhal Yesilyurt Gündüz

Even a cursory view of different Turkish perceptions of the European Economic Community (EEC), or as it later became, the European Community (EC) and then the European Union (EU), reveals quite different opinions and positions amongst Turkish political parties, labor unions and trade and business associations at different periods of time. On one side, one can notice the attitude of moderate circles, which regarded association and accession as the continuation of the traditional westernization drive of the modern Turkish state, even while they also found words of criticism for the association. On the other, the extreme left and right both considered the EEC as a power strange to Turkish culture ...

CREATING CONDITIONS FOR PEACEMAKING:
THE CYPRUS CASE

Zeliha Sezgin Khashman

The Cyprus conflict remains one of the  complex  isues on the global agenda. As one American analyst has said ‘the conflict has resisted with tenacity the efforts of many nations to bring about a solution. It frustrates diplomats, irritates those who believe we have made progress in studying techniques of negotiation…'. Cyprus has been divided by ethnicity, language and religion;  approximately 80 per cent of the people speak Greek  as a mother tongue and are Greek Orthodox Christians by religion;  approximately 20 per cent are Turkish Muslims.  The present dispute between...

REVISITING SECURITY COMMUNITIES  AFTER THE COLD WAR : THE CONSTRUCTIVIST PERSPECTIVE

Hasan Ulusoy

History shows that  ‘security, whether defined narrowly or widely, is a scarce commodity'. Therefore, it is generally observed that in face of security threat perceptions, states feel the necessity to combine their efforts to strengthen their own security by acting together. This brings us to the concept of collective security, which has been widely debated in the literature of international relations, both in practice and in theory, during which scholars have attempted to provide several formulations to ensure collective security, in the context of international relations theory.

INSERTING FLEXIBILITY INTO NATO? LESSONS FOR NATO FROM THE EU 

Saban Kardas

The recent crisis in NATO concerning lending support to Turkey in anticipation of a war against Iraq was no doubt a major one. And as such it was a serious blow to those arguing for the ongoing and ever-continuing relevancy of the Alliance and its ‘successful' adaptation in the post-Cold War era. It poses challenging and puzzling questions to the students of NATO, the most interesting one being: Why --  after having survived the post-Cold War identity crisis by successfully managing the challenge of the enlargement rounds, contributing to cooperative security in Europe through several ...

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