On Sunday, December 16, Kyrgyzstan held snap parliamentary elections, following the constitutional referendum of October 21. Twelve political parties competed for 90 seats, to be distributed on the basis of proportional representation. As expected, President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s Ak Zhol political party won the elections with... MORE

What a difference a year makes. One of the final diplomatic triumphs of Turkmen leader Saparmurat Niyazov before his death last December was to renegotiate Turkmenistan's exclusive natural gas contracts with the Russian energy giant Gazprom from a bargain rate of $65 per thousand cubic... MORE

Two major Kyrgyz opposition parties – Ata Meken and the Social-Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan (SDPK) – have been experiencing extreme pressure from the government ahead of parliamentary elections on December 16. After SDPK member Edil Baisalov’s published a sample ballot on his personal blog on... MORE

Kazakhstan’s ruling elite has clearly been in a self-congratulatory mood since securing the chairmanship of the OSCE in 2010. However, as its foreign policy evolves in the meantime, there is no guarantee that Kazakhstan will emerge as an OSCE-inspired Eurasian bastion of democracy. Regional issues... MORE

On December 6 Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev appointed Nurlan Balgimbayev to be his advisor. Shortly before the announcement, a new wave of administrative reforms replaced several regional governors and top government officials, including the ministers of finance and energy and mineral resources. Balgimbayev is one... MORE

One of Vladimir Putin’s most notable accomplishments since he assumed the presidency of the Russian Federation on December 31, 1999, has been his relentless effort to downsize the Western presence in the Russian Federation energy sector. Now it seems that Kazakhstan might be pursuing similar... MORE

The OSCE’s year-end meeting in Madrid has resolved that Kazakhstan shall hold the organization’s Chairmanship in 2010. In 2008 already, Kazakhstan will host the annual session of the OSCE’s Parliamentary Assembly (a body that severely criticized the conduct of Russia’s December 2 parliamentary elections, see... MORE

As the political campaign for Kyrgyzstan’s December 16 parliamentary elections intensifies, the Kyrgyz opposition is experiencing direct and indirect pressure from the government. Whereas Kyrgyz political parties show greater professionalism in designing and promoting their election campaigns, the government has crafted new techniques to curb... MORE

On December 1 Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov announced that construction has begun at the Turkmen-Iranian border city of Bereket on a railroad linking Iran, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. The 900-kilometer (560 miles) railroad, with around 700 kilometers (435 miles) inside Turkmenistan, will provide greater capacity for... MORE

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s November 21-23 Balkan tour, which came on the heels of his trip to the United Arab Emirates and Syria (see EDM, November 15), symbolically demonstrated Kazakhstan’s adherence to its trumpeted multi-vector foreign policy. Astana’s efforts to boost energy cooperation with Slovakia,... MORE