In Russia, the new year will kick off with price increases — the value-added tax (VAT) will jump from 18 to 20 percent. Among other things, the government hopes that this will at least partially compensate for cuts made to the health and education systems. Authorities deemed these cuts necessary due to the fall of…

Twenty years ago today, Turkey announced Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Öcalan had been captured in Kenya and brought back to Turkey. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the organisation he led, had been fighting the Turkish government for 15 years, seeking national liberation for Turkey’s Kurdish minority. When the PKK was established, it was illegal in Turkey…

Orientalism & Cultural Imperialism;Edward Said’s Viewpoint By Hamed Kazemzadeh (Hkaze065@uottawa.ca)Conflict Studies ProgramSaint Paul University – University of OttawaBook Review: Said, Edward. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.ECS 5101: Identity – Based Conflict (Fall Semester 2018)Supervisor: Professor Enkelejda Sula Raxhimi (esraxhimi@ustpaul.ca) Published in Internal Journal of ACPCS – Winter 2019 (N.8); pp. 24-26 A. IntroductionOrientalism is…

Russia’s and the de facto authorities’ attempts to physically demarcate a boundary between the breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia/Tskhinvali Region and the rest of Georgia have led to severe restrictions on freedom of movement and other human rights violations, with families separated by barbed wire, cut off their livelihoods and at risk of…

Power-Sharing and the Unravelling of the post-Civil War Status Quo By Hamed Kazemzadeh Published in Internal Journal Parts of Central Asia – a region where authoritarian rule has been the norm since the end of the Soviet Union – are liberalising, albeit modestly. In Uzbekistan, this has been the case since the passing of President…