Most recent projects in Eurasia
For the second time in five years, protesters have overthrown the government of Kyrgyzstan, a strategically important Central Asian nation with a history of superpower rivalry and corruption among the ruling elites.
The poorest of the former Soviet republics endures a second winter of deprivation, racked by food shortages, energy cut-offs, a largely dysfunctional government, and the return of tens of thousands of migrant Tajik workers who have lost their jobs in Russia because of the global economic crisis.
A resurgent Turkey has shifted from being a linchpin of the Cold War Western system to an increasingly independent-minded actor standing at the world’s most geopolitically crucial intersection, where the Middle East and Caucasus meet southeast Europe. As Turkish society struggles with secular and religious self-definitions, Iason Athanasiadis reports on a country in transition.
2 February 2008
The war between Russia and Georgia caught most of the world by surprise but it is a conflict that has long been brewing – and one that is part of a larger drama. The bigger context is Russia’s attempt to regain the influence it enjoyed during the Cold War years, and the hurdles that stand in the way of projecting its identity as a unified, sovereign nation.
Pulitzer Center Director Jon Sawyer traveled to Russia and throughout the South Caucasus, reporting on a region that is caught between East and West, North and South as well as its own conflicted history.
