Category Archives: The CIS and South Eastern Europe

Sure is cold

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Eastern Europe is currently enjoying its coldest weather since 1979. Temperatures in Moscow have been below minus 20 C (that’s minus 5 Fahrenheit for our American readers) for a week straight now, with regular visits to minus 30 (minus 22 Fahrenheit). In Bucharest, where we live, it’s currently minus 9 Celsius; that will drop to minus 14, or about plus 8 Fahrenheit, later tonight. (To give some perspective on that, you should know that most of the houses in our neighborhood have arbors full of grape vines, and roses were blooming in our yard at the beginning of December.)

It’s cold. Over 100 people have died in Russia. I’m in Pristina, Kosovo at the moment, and it’s right around minus 15 as the sun goes down. I won’t even convert that to Fahrenheit — it’s too depressing — but there’s a stiff wind blowing sinister little arcs of snow around the roads, and I’m really not in a hurry to go outside again.

The cold is coming from a cold air mass with sharply defined edges. Just a couple of hundred kilometers south and west of me, Tirana, Albania is enjoying a balmy +3 Celsius. It’s been gradually creeping westward, so right now the edge seems to be somewhere in Germany; Prague and Berlin are getting whacked, but France is still pleasantly warm. It’s possible that the whole thing may dissipate without reaching further. In which case it won’t ever be much of a news story because, you know… Eastern Europe.

Ah, don’t mind me. Weather like this makes me paranoid. Because Mother Nature is trying to kill me…

Who else is sitting under that blue-white splotch on the map? Consider this an open thread for weather talk.

In other Turkish censorship news

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The Comics Reporter reports:

A court of appeals in Turkey has thrown out a fine against a cartoonist who depicted Prime Minister Reycip Erdogan as a horse. Sefer Selvi’s cartoon appeared in April 2004 and led to an approximately $7500 fine — although I admit I’m guessing on that latter fact, what with their being multiple Turkish currencies and my having a general conversion incompetence that usually only rears its ugly head whenever I buy DVDs from Hong Kong.

Erdogan has cases or threatened cases out against Musa Kart and Erdil Yasaroglu for animal-related cartoons they made that would be mild by US publishing standards but nonetheless honked off Erdogan. Erdogan’s habit of checking the press by lawsuit has come under fire throughout Europe as a potential issue that could keep Turkey from becoming a bigger economic partner with the West.

Orhan Pahmouk on his trial

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The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town

In Istanbul this Friday—in Şişli, the district where I have spent my whole life, in the courthouse directly opposite the three-story house where my grandmother lived alone for forty years—I will stand before a judge. My crime is to have “publicly denigrated Turkish identity.” The prosecutor will ask that I be imprisoned for three years. I should perhaps find it worrying that the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was tried in the same court for the same offense, under Article 301 of the same statute, and was found guilty, but I remain optimistic. For, like my lawyer, I believe that the case against me is thin; I do not think I will end up in jail.

Ukraine’s Unfinished Revolution

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Can the new democracy withstand a murder investigation?

So, when Viktor Yushchenko was catapulted to power last December, there was widespread expectation that the government would finally solve the crime. After all, ex-President Kuchma appeared to have been implicated in the murder by audiotapes provided by a former guard.

Alas, it’s been 10 months since Yushchenko took power, and, so far, little progress has been made: The alleged murderers have been arrested, but the men behind those men have yet to be identified.

Bosnian protectorate

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Can an Iron Fist Put Power in Bosnia’s Hands? – New York Times

“There is a growing consensus that Paddy Ashdown, Bosnia’s high representative, may be doing as much harm as good by holding back the development of democracy.”

This line of criticism has been put forward by some at least since Bildt was succeeded by the spaniard in 97, but naturally become more widespread and vocal over time. It hitting the NYT online frontpage may be a sign of some kind of turning point.

As for the the substance, the criticism souds sensible, but I don’t have any strong opinion. Curious what the Dougs and Brussels Gonzo think.

How Quickly We Forget

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Coincidences never cease to surprise me. Last Friday I mentioned the work of Brookings analyst Fiona Hill on Afoe. Well today she writes in the FT (with Sara Mendelson) alerting us to the continuing problems of the North Caucasus and our continuing neglect (subscription only unfortunately).

This week, the one-year anniversary of the hostage siege and massacre of children and parents in the Beslan school gym is tinged with a specific sorrow; it could happen again. The political situation in Russia?s North Caucasus region is dangerously unstable but few outside the region are paying attention.

Beslan was an especially depraved example of what has spread well beyond Chechnya. Acts of intra-communal violence, brutal assassinations, explosions and armed clashes are the norm in places such as Dagestan and Ingushetia. Local politics is circumscribed by corruption, incompetence and a lack of interest in the wellbeing of ordinary people. Many regional leaders are running their fiefdoms into the ground. While some in the Russian government claim that the situation has ?normalised? (the Putin administration plans ?parliamentary elections? in Chechnya this November), a recently leaked document from the Kremlin?s own representative to the North Caucasus asserts that the situation is perilous.

Bulgarian Elections

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Tomorrow Bulgaria will have elections:

Nearly six decades after Simeon II, Bulgaria’s 9-year-old child-king, was removed by the Communists, their heirs are again poised to oust him from power. The opposition Socialist Party is leading opinion polls ahead of the June 25 general election and is likely to defeat Prime Minister Simeon Saxcoburggotski.

Actually I know a little bit about Bulgaria as I did some research into Bulgarian immigrants in Spain a couple of years back. My impression is that the Simeon regime is extraordinarily corrupt. Many Bulgarians have had to leave simply to send money home to their parents who can only survive with difficulty on the state pensions. Of course, one extract in the article did catch my eye:

Bulgaria’s demographic decline is also likely to favor the Socialists, who count heavily on the country’s 1.8 million pensioners for support. An estimated 700,000 mostly young people have left the country since the fall of communism in 1989 in hopes of a better life in the West

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Erdogan, no champion of free speeech

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The owner of a satirical magazine sued for publishing drawings of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s head on the bodies of animals accused the premier of intolerance on the opening day of his trial Tuesday.

Erdogan has done things like this for a while now, but I haven’t seen any mention of it in the western media. I only learned of it because I read The Comics Reporter by Tom Spurgeon.

This is of course not the only thing wrong with Turkish democracy. They’ve made significant progress in the last years, but it’s not certain they’ll be sufficiently democratic in a decade or whenever negotions will end.

Erdogan has in the past presented himself as a champion of free speech, frequently alluding to the four-month jail term he served in 1999 for reciting what the courts deemed an inflammatory poem.

Last year a court also ordered the left-wing newspaper Evrensel to pay 10,000 new Turkish lira (US$8,000/-6,000) for a cartoon which portrayed Erdogan as a horse being ridden by one of his advisers.

Earlier this year, he sued an 80-year old veteran journalist Fikret Otyam who criticized government attempts to criminalize adultery by saying the premier had reduced politics to the “level of the crotch,” seeking 5,000 new Turkish lira (US$3,200/-2,850) in compensation.