Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center

On June 19, please join the Eurasia Center [2] for a discussion on the IMF’s recent presentation Two Decades of Transition in Caucasus and Central Asia: Taking Stock and the Road Ahead with Dr. Juha Kähkönen, deputy director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia department, and the Honorable William Courtney, former US ambassador to Georgia and Kazakhstan and former special assistant to the President and senior director of the National Security Council staff for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia. This event will be streamed LIVE [3] from 10:30 a.m.

Follow us on Twitter: @ACEurasia [4]and @AtlanticCouncil [5]

Tweet today's event with hashtag #ACIMF

[8]

As a resident of Istanbul, it is clear to me that Turkey’s unique form of democracy has reached a defining moment.

A quiet protest by a handful of environmentalists has exploded into a nationwide outcry by the half of Turkey’s electorate that did not vote for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

[10]

More than two decades after the end of the Soviet occupation, and eight years after they joined NATO and the European Union, the Baltic republics remain disintegrated from the rest of Europe in one crucial way:  their natural gas infrastructure isolates them into “energy islands.”  But, for the first time in their histories, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania now have a chance to secure their energy independence by connecting their natural gas systems with those of their European allies and evolving them into market-based trading systems.

[12]

The Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center [2] hosted a members' conference call with former US Ambassador to Turkey and Director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center Ross Wilson [13] and the newly appointed Council Nonresident Senior Fellow Dr. Sabine Freizer on the current protests in Turkey and what to expect next.

[14]

If all goes well, by the end of this month the multinational Shah Deniz Consortium will select the European leg of a grand pipeline project known as the Southern Gas Corridor to ship Caspian gas to Europe.

[16]

On June 4, the Atlantic Council hosted an off-the-record roundtable discussion between Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Secretary General Lamberto Zannier, State Department representatives and Council leaders and scholars. Topics ranged from OSCE strengths and its strategy for future missions to tactics for augmenting US and EU engagement.

[17]

In soccer, an “own goal” is scored when a player accidentally hits the ball into his own net. The poor handling by Turkish authorities of demonstrations in Istanbul’s Taksim Square that spilled over to Ankara, Izmir and cities all over the country constitutes an own goal that now undermines the political prospects of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party.

[18]

While international hacking episodes linked to the governments of Iran [20], Syria [21], North Korea [22], and China [23] have received widespread attention, media outlets often underreport government use of these tools against their own citizens.

On May 23rd, Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center [2] Assistant Director Laura Linderman [25] was interviewed by Rustavi2 Washington Correspondent David Nikuradze about the May 21st arrest of former Prime Minister Vano Merabishvili.