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  • “Ergenekon” play and totalitarianism nightmare on Turkey

    “Ergenekon” play and totalitarianism nightmare on Turkey

    “Ergenekon” play and totalitarianism nightmare on Turkey

    Niyaz Yagublu

     Ben Azerbaycandan bir araştırmacı ve yazar olarak Türkiyemizde olup bitenleri dikkatle izliyorum. Türkiyemizde cereyan eden olayların genelde hangi politikalardan kaynaklandığına Azerbaycan kamuoyunda aydınlık getirmek istiyorum. Türkiye ile bağlı bir sıra yazılarım yayımlanmıştır. Kendim Azerbaycan Milli Bilimler Akademisinde çalışıyorum, “Development Watch” Research Center-in başkanıyım. Size ingilizce bir yazımı gönderiyorum.

    Niyaz Yagublu
    “Development Watch” Research Center
    Başkan
    www.qaraoyneli.azeriblog.com
    ________________________________________________________________________

    “Ergenekon” play and totalitarianism nightmare on Turkey


    July 1, 2008 sequel of the “Ergenekon” scenario, which began in January, has illuminated a host of hidden, ominous issues. The AKP (Party of Justice and Development) is successfully moving forward the government’s policy of infiltration into all the structures of the Turkish state, with the purpose of regime changing according to the “Moderate Islam” model, designed in overseas.
    Resorting to the detention of high rank retired generals and civil society activists, including a great number of academicians and journalists, is evaluated as a response to Prosecutor General of Turkey Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya’s demand to close the ruling AKP due to its attempts to overthrow the existing secular regime. However the counter    ‐measures of AKP through judicial authorities namely at the final stage of the investigation of the aforementioned appeal, was an expected step. The abuse of methods and facilities, which has judicial authority within a constitutional state by AKP against its rivals, is simultaneously meant to demonstrate their strength in the psychological war between executors of the “Moderate Islam” project and secular state supporters. Download

    Posted by nyturkishtimes at 11/15/2008 5:16 PM | Add Comment
  • MUSTAFA: Film that shows Turkey’s founder as a womanizer and heavy drinker drawing crowds, controversy

    MUSTAFA: Film that shows Turkey’s founder as a womanizer and heavy drinker drawing crowds, controversy

    By SUZAN FRASER |Associated Press Writer

    1:09 PM EST, November 13, 2008

     

    ANKARA, Turkey (AP) _ A documentary that portrays the revered founder of modern Turkey as a lonely womanizer with a weakness for alcohol and cigarettes is drawing massive crowds but outraging hardline followers of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s secular tradition.

    More than a half-million people have watched “Mustafa” since it premiered Oct. 29 on the 85th anniversary of the Turkish republic, making it one of the most-seen films in Turkey in recent years.

    But hardline secularists are livid over its portrait of Ataturk as an authoritarian leader who was detached from the people and spent his final days smoking and drinking alone.

    Turkey’s top mobile telephone operator, Turkcell, withdrew its sponsorship after watching portions of the documentary before its release, fearing association with the documentary could cost it customers. And two university professors filed a formal complaint with a court in Istanbul on Monday demanding an investigation into the film’s director, journalist Can Dundar, for “eroding Ataturk’s respectability.” Insulting Ataturk is a crime in Turkey.

    “Ataturk is the glue that holds the Turkish people together, he is its leader, a model personality,” professors Ahmet Ercan and Orhan Kural wrote.

    Ataturk became a hero for his fearless leadership against Britain and its allies in the World War I battle of Gallipoli and went on to lead his demoralized, occupied nation to independence in 1922. He embarked on a series of radical reforms aimed at turning overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey into a European-style democracy — abolishing the Ottoman caliphate, giving the vote to women, restricting Islamic dress and replacing the Arabic script with the Roman alphabet.

    Admirers say he created a model nation that shows that democracy and Islam can blend. Ataturk is idolized as the personification of that tradition 70 years after his death at age 58 of cirrhosis of the liver. His portrait is virtually ubiquitous, on home, school and office walls, currency and even jewelry such as tie pins and shirt buttons.

    But Islamists dislike Ataturk for reforms that reduced religion’s role and banned religious orders such as the Sufis.

    “Mustafa” does not delve deeply into Ataturk’s bravery and achievements and critics say it devotes too much time to his weaknesses. It depicts him as afraid of the dark and terrified by a distant cloud of dust he thinks is kicked up by soldiers loyal to the Ottoman sultan who are trying to get him. It turns out to be a herd of animals passing in the distance.

    The two-hour documentary narrated by Dundar shows Ataturk often alone, melancholic and spending his days in the palace in Ankara, the capital he founded, drinking a bottle of the traditional Turkish spirit raki and smoking three packs a day. Critics say Ataturk was rarely alone and that his dinners were lively occasions where state affairs and reforms were discussed.

    Critics have also slammed the documentary for showing Ataturk’s establishment of a secular system as motivated by vengeance for being punished by a religious education teacher at school.

    Yigit Bulut, a popular columnist for the Vatan newspaper, called the film “freaky” and the “latest attempt of an effort to belittle Ataturk in the eyes of the people.”

    “Do not watch the documentary, prevent people from watching it and most important of all, do not allow your children to see it and prevent the seeds that belittle Ataturk from being sowed into their subconscious minds,” he wrote.

    Dundar has conceded he was wrong to portray the secular reforms as “vengeance” but defends his work as a realistic depiction of a man seen too long as beyond criticism.

    “I wanted to present Ataturk to the new generation through cinema,” Dundar told The Associated Press. “I wanted to present a warmer, a more human side to Ataturk.”

    “I knew the film would be spark a debate but I was surprised by the petty things the film was criticized for,” Dundar said “I have been criticized because he appears to be short in some photos or because he smoked.”

    Critics also say the documentary suggests Ataturk was a womanizer. It touches on his brief marriage and alleged romances without going into details. Part of the film is based on letters he wrote a lover from the war front.

    “For the first time we see a leader writing love letters from the front,” Dundar told the AP. “This is beautiful. I cannot understand how people come to the conclusion that the film depicts Ataturk as a womanizer.”

    Related topic galleries: Democracy, World War I, Clothing and Textiles Industry, Health and Safety at School, Movies, Islam

    Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

  • Summit of G20 nations is unlikely to produce quick solutions

    Summit of G20 nations is unlikely to produce quick solutions

    Gerald Herbert / Associated Press
    Speaking at the Manhattan Institute in New York, President Bush disputed that deregulation was to blame for the financial crisis.
    Leaders of the developed and developing nations are to meet this weekend in Washington to discuss a response to the economic crisis, but a plan of action may be months down the road.
    By Maura Reynolds
    November 14, 2008
    Reporting from Washington — Considering how rapidly the global economic crisis has escalated, leaders converging in Washington for a weekend financial summit might be accused of taking a lackadaisical approach to developing a strategy to solve it.

    After all, they’re saying this will be just the first of several such summits. And agreeing on a joint plan of action lies months down the road at best.

    President Bush called the summit on short notice several weeks ago as the financial markets plunged and demands rose for a coordinated, global response to stem the crisis and prevent future ones.

    But Bush says now that though delegates may agree on principles this weekend, big decisions will come later.

    “The issues are too complex, the problem is too significant to try to solve, or to come with reasonable recommendations in just one meeting,” Bush said in a speech Thursday at a Manhattan Institute event at Federal Hall in New York. “So this summit will be the first of a series of meetings.”

    There are several other reasons leaders plan to kick the can down the road on the hard decisions. First and foremost is that the United States has a president-in-waiting, Barack Obama, and any agreement without his participation probably would be ineffective.

    Also, developed nations continue to have differences over the specifics of a common strategy. And the fissures are even more pronounced when the views of developing and underdeveloped nations are added to the equation.

    Under the circumstances, the risk that the summit could go badly is much greater than the likelihood that it could go well, said Charles Freeman, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

    “If you’re Obama, you want your fingerprints nowhere near this thing,” Freeman said. “You’ll take up the process when it’s launched and more stable down the road. But he said there’s only one president, and he’s pretty glad it ain’t him right now.”

    Still, Obama has named two representatives to meet with foreign officials on the sidelines of the summit, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Republican Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa, a former House banking committee chairman.

    Obama aides emphasize, however, that the advisors will not attend summit gatherings or play any formal role in the discussions.

    “There is one president at a time in the United States, so the president-elect has asked Secretary Albright and Congressman Leach, an experienced and bipartisan team, to be available to meet with and listen to our friends and allies on his behalf,” Obama senior foreign policy advisor Denis McDonough said in a news release.

    The summit will be the first meeting of the heads of state and government of the G20 — a group of developed and emerging countries that coalesced in the wake of the Asian and Russian financial crises of 1998. Until now, it was the finance ministers and state central bankers who met.

    Last week, G20 finance ministers met in Sao Paulo, Brazil, to complete plans for this weekend’s meeting, including drafting a list of five principles their leaders are expected to approve Saturday in Washington.

    The principles are: increasing transparency and accountability of financial institutions; increasing government spending on economic stimulus efforts; providing more cash to banks that need it; avoiding trade restrictions; and shoring up the reserves of the International Monetary Fund and other international organizations.

    That agenda is far less ambitious than the one initially envisioned by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who called for a “second Bretton Woods” conference to remake international financial organizations.

    The Bretton Woods conference, held in 1944 at a rambling resort hotel in New Hampshire as World War II raged, was convened to lay out a financial system for the postwar world. It led to the founding of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, among other institutions.

    This weekend, with so many presidents and prime ministers at the table, the crucial message of the G20 gathering will be political, not financial. The leaders will be trying to send the message that they are willing and able to do whatever it takes to end the crisis — and then set up working groups of financial officials to work out the details.

    “It is essential that the G20 meeting signals an unmistakable common resolve to overcome the crisis, to act together, to act with urgency and to show solidarity toward the neediest,” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who will be attending the conference, said in a letter to other leaders.

    The G20 nations, which account for almost 90% of global gross domestic product, or total value of goods and services, are: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, Britain and the United States.

    Tensions between the more developed and developing countries has been growing because many of the emerging economies are far more robust than the more established ones. The IMF estimates that economies in the developed world, including the United States and Europe, will go into recession for the next year, while emerging economies will continue to grow, but at a slower rate.

    Some experts are looking to countries with stronger economies and large central bank reserves — primarily China and Brazil, but also Russia and India — to help tide over the rest of the nations by, for instance, helping to fund an expanded IMF.

    But those countries are hesitant to rush into the breach. They have their own domestic economies to take care of; they also are a bit irked that they are being roped in to be the saviors in a crisis that began elsewhere.

    U.S. officials are anxious to avoid finger-pointing. Bush even referred to that fear in his remarks Thursday.

    “Some blame the crisis on insufficient regulation of the American mortgage market,” the president said in New York, but insisted that “the crisis was not a failure of the free market system.”

    “History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market, it is too much government involvement in the market,” he said.

    But tougher regulation of the financial markets and closer international supervision appear to be high on the priority list for several other countries at the summit and beyond.

    “Everyone is talking about improving transparency of major financial sector players,” said Arkady Dvorkovich, economic advisor to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. “Everyone, including Russia, is saying that accounting standards should be harmonized around the world . . . to make sure investors understand financial risks clearly.”

    But even in its waning days, that may be a hard sell to the Bush administration. In his remarks Thursday, the president heralded the robust economies of Japan and South Korea as examples of the triumph of the free market, while criticizing the “devastating results” of other economic models in the Soviet Union, Cuba and Iran.

    “The record is unmistakable: If you seek economic growth, if you seek opportunity, if you seek social justice and human dignity, the free market system is the way to go,” Bush said. “And it would be a terrible mistake to allow a few months of crisis to undermine 60 years of success.”

    Reynolds is a Times staff writer.

    maura.reynolds@latimes.com

  • Ship stops research operations

    Ship stops research operations

    The Norwegian research ship Malene Ostervold has sent a message informing that it has stopped its research operations in the sea region southeast of the island of Kastelorizo.

    Foreign Ministry spokesman George Koumoutsakos said in an announcement on Saturday that as of Friday, November 14, the Norwegian research ship “Malene Ostervold” had entered the region of the southeastern Mediterranean and more specifically, to the south and to the east of Kastelorizo to carry out, outside Greek territorial waters, geophysical research for Turkish interests, accompanied by the Turkish frigate “Gediz.”

    “Given that according to the relevant provisions of the International Agreement on Sea Law, a large part of this region includes the Greek continental shelf, the Foreign Ministry, in constant contact and coordination with the Defence Ministry, has made demarches as of yesterday to the Norwegian ambassador and to the Turkish ambassador in Athens, as well as to the Turkish Foreign Ministry in Ankara, at the level of Assistant Deputy Foreign Minister,” Koumoutsakos said.

    The spokesman further said that “at noon today, Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis communicated with Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Stere” and that “apart from this and following relevant instructions by the minister, the Greek ambassador in Oslo communicated with the shipping company owning the Norwegian research ship to notify it of Greece’s relevant positions.”

    Koumoutsakos also said that a short while ago “the Norwegian research ship informed with a relevant message that it is stopping research activities in the specific region.”

    The National Defence General Staff also announced that the Norwegian ship “Malene Ostervold” informed the gunboat “Polemistis” that it was stopping its research operations.

    From: The Athens News Agency at

  • Yunus Emre… The visit to a heart is best of all…

    Yunus Emre… The visit to a heart is best of all…

    Bircan Unver: Yunus Emre…

    The visit to a heart is best of all…

    by Emily ALP

    Whether you were an avid reader of Yunus Emre or someone who vaguely knew his name, Monday night’s celebration (October 27, 2008) of his work offered attendees a deeper sense of his literary genius and social influence. More than 170 people gathered in a conference room at Columbia University’s International Affairs Building, NYC, to hear renowned professor Talat Halman discuss Yunus Emre’s life, words and socio-political significance in late 13th and early 14th centuries.

    The program entitled Yunus Emre: Contemporary of Rumi was presented by the Light Millennium in collaboration with Columbia University’s Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures department and Middle East Institute, and produced by Bircan Ünver and Etem Erol.

    Many people—including Swedish Ambassador, Ulf Hjertonsson and his wife Karin, as well as Turkish Consulate Mehmet Samsar and his wife Furuza—were likely drawn by Yunus Emre’s connection to famed poet Rumi. However, Halman soon explained that Rumi himself was impressed by Emre and even critiqued by him.

    Professor Halman, the world’s principal scholar and translator of Emre’s work, took audience members on a contextual journey through the mystical poet’s relationship with Rumi, society and the divine. He spoke of key differences between Emre and Rumi, including Emre’s offering of poems to the simple people as opposed to just intellectuals of the time. And he went so far as to describe Emre as “beyond Rumi.”

    “Emre – poet, traveling with his instrument—offered his poems to the simple people,” Halman explained.

    While Rumi was a Persian poet writing works for intellectuals of the region, Emre was a mystical, nomadic presence springing from Anatolia herself—he connected readily to the villagers therein.

    Emre’s messages were eloquent and easy to understand, as was evident in many of the quotes Halman pulled and wove into his engaging lecture. The feelings, imagery and suggestions took palpable form as he spoke Emre’s words. And Ismail Hakki Cimen played the ney to help channel the total feeling.

    “I am the one who gave his heart to love and turned into a wild duck of passion,” Halman translated.

    Yunus Emre is said to have critiqued Rumi’s words to his face, saying entire stanzas of his poetry could have been condensed into an easy-to-understand couplet. Halman also explained Rumi’s open admiration of Emre and even an admission that he, himself, strove to achieve what Emre had spiritually, but probably never would.

    “Whenever I arrive at a new spiritual height, there I find footsteps of a mystic I shall never surpass,” Halman said quoting what many believe were Rumi’s words.

    The audience sat at attention, enthralled and no doubt learning more than they ever knew about Yunus Emre. As a man who translated the first book of Emre’s words into English, and more thereafter, Halman proved not only to be a prominent scholar but also a man who is deeply in love with everything that Emre was and stood for. The professor was eager to share the current relevance of Emre’s message, too.

    The famed saying of the 60s and 70s “make love, not war,” says Halman, was uttered by Emre almost 600 years before when he said “I’m not here on earth for strife; love is the mission of my life!”

    People around the world associate Islam with violence and strife, Halman said. Yet, several times he raised the point to a captive audience that if Emre’s version of Islam were practiced and spread, the world would be a peaceful place.

    This event, put on by Light Millennium—in collaboration with Columbia University—served as an appropriate reminder that it is a human impulse to shut people out using religion but a divine aspiration to include them no matter what their faith or other differences may be. Indeed, Emre believed that spiritual perfection could be found when all religions combine.

    Yunus Emre stood fast against fundamentalism and rigidity as practices in the Islamic faith and in general society, according to Halman. He promoted the ideal of expansion beyond the self through love and service to others. He was indeed a mystic as well as a point of contrast for Europeans wallowing in the dark ages as well as over-zealous enforcers of the Islamic faith throughout his native land of Anatolia and beyond.

    “Pharisee, make the holy pilgrimage if need be a hundred times—but if you ask me, the visit to a heart is best of all,” Halman quoted.

    What people may not know is that Halman was only released from the hospital in Ankara less than a week before he flew in to New York City on Friday, October 24th. Due to his health, this celebration had been postponed, back in April. Yet he was determined to realize his commitment to spreading the word about Yunus Emre.

    Toward the end of his presentation, Halman grew faint. Having stood before the audience more than an hour sharing poetry and all of his beloved drops of knowledge about Emre, the professor nearly fell down with exhaustion and was helped to take a seat. A few minutes went by as he sat with a smile. Slightly revived, he insisted on finishing the presentation with a few last couplets. His last words for the audience being:

    “Let us all be friends for once. Let us make life easy for us. The earth is left to no one …”

    Ismail Hakki Cimen introduced a gentle sound with the ney. His expertise in traditional Ottoman Sufi traditional music had him filling the room with otherworldly sound. With the messages and mystical life of Yunus Emre in mind, the audience enjoyed the second half of the celebration—music by Cimen and other renowned musicians.

    Taoufiq Ben Amor, Arabic professor at Columbia University, percussionist and oud player, joined Cimen in providing the nights musical renditions of Emre’s poetry. The words, sung by Ahmet Erdogdular, were all an effort to capture love and devotion and oneness as well as the connection between humans and God that renders them one in the same.

    Having participated in concerts as a lead singer while still a teenager, Erdogdular clearly mastered the intricate intonations and lulls required to convey the musical message amidst the words—the performance was tear jerking in perfection.

    To close the night of mysticism and song, Persian composer and vocalist, Amir Vahab joined Aslihan Calisan in sharing his composition, vocals and percussion.

    Finally, what would it all mean without a taste of the foods from Anatolia herself and all who have moved about her for hundreds of years? The crowd enjoyed salad, pilav, pita and hummus courtesy of Sip Sak Turkish restaurant, as well as baklava provided by Gulluoglu.

    The event would not have been possible without the generous donation of time, effort, skills, and space by Columbia, NYU and Light Millennium staff and volunteers.

    They’re names follow (in alphabetic order):

    Volunteers:
    Emily Alp, Still Photography, and Media Coverage
    Gokce Alp, Videography
    Josh Amata, Volunteer
    Merve Arabaci, Registration, Reception
    Humeyra Kocak, Host, Digital Photography
    Heather Hwalet, Registration
    Aysen Terzi, Reception
    Sera Onalan, Registration
    Asik Mehmet Ali, Reception
    Media:
    Selcuk Acar, Star Gazete, Turkish Journal
    Ozlem Sakar, Anatolian News Agency
    Yeni Ufuklar and Crew, TRT International
    Razi Canikligil, Hurriyet USA

    Special Thanks To:
    Leyla Amzi
    Astrid Benedek
    Prof. Rym Bettaieb of Columbia University
    Defne Nayman, MD.,
    The Columbia Emergency Team

    This program was a true celebration of Yunus Emre, a model of his words:
    “Let us all be friends for once. Let us make life easy for us. The earth is left to no one …”

    Special update for the attendees of the program and anyone concerned about Professor Halman:
    Prof. Halman was taken to the emergency room based on the strong suggestions by his wife Seniha Halman, his editor Dr. Jayne Warner, Turkish Consulate Mehmet Samsar and Prof. Etem Erol, who all accompanied to him. Further, the producers of the program visited him at the hospital after the end of the program. He was feeling a lot better and even making some jokes. He was discharged from the hospital by midnight after all test results came back okay. Mrs. Halman explained on the phone to Bircan Unver on October 28, 2008 that Prof. Halman was “de-hydrated” during his flight, which was the caused of his health problem during his presentation.

    Bircan Unver!s choice..

  • Moscow’s Moves in Georgia Open Door for Pan-Turkist Projects in North Caucasus

    Moscow’s Moves in Georgia Open Door for Pan-Turkist Projects in North Caucasus

    Paul Goble

    Tallinn, November 14 – By recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Moscow has opened the door for an expansion of pan-Turkist activity in the North Caucasus, thus falling into a trap set by Western countries when they recognized Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia and setting the stage for a new “parade of sovereignties” in the North Caucasus.
    And consequently, however much the Russian moves in Georgia corresponded to Russia’s national interests in the short term, commentator Igor Bokov argues in an essay posted online this week, they could prove fatal to Russian control of the broader region unless Moscow takes preventive measures (www.apn.ru/publications/article20992.htm).
    In recent months, many analysts have focused on the growing activism of Circassian groups in the North Caucasus not only because of their support for the independence of Abkhazia and opposition to the Sochi Olympics but also because of the large and influential Circassian diasporas in Turkey and Jordan.
    Much less attention has been given to the Turkic language groups in the region, which include the Karachay, Balkars, Nogays and Kumyks, but because of their location near Russia’s southern border and the activities of Turks abroad, they may prove even more important in the political development of the Caucasus in the coming months, the Moscow researcher argues.
    Like many Russian analysts, Bokov discusses these trends in terms of what he sees as a broader effort by the West to promote the disintegration of multi-national states like the Russian Federation in order to strengthen the power of capitalist economics by weakening any alternative political arrangements.
    But despite that, his article represents an intriguing contribution to the understanding of the Caucasus not only because of what he writes about two major Turkic groups in the North Caucasus but also because of what he says about the “unofficial” efforts by Turkey and other countries to reach out to them.
    The Turkic-speaking Balkars, who form 10 percent of the population of Kabardino-Balkaria, have nonetheless formed a Council of Elders of the Balkar People and demanded that the constitution of that republic be amended to give them equal representation in the parliament to the much larger Kabardinian (Circassian) and Russian communities.
    If that does not happen by January 31, 2009, this group says, the Council of Elders has declared, then it will proclaim the independence of Balkaria, an action that would undermine not only all the other multi-national republics in the North Caucasus but create a new hotspot for Moscow there.
    What makes this movement intriguing, Bokov says, is not just the small size of the Balkar community but the fact that most of the leaders of the Balkar Council of Elders are militia officers who were fired after Arsen Kanokov became president of the republic and who seek to return to power and a new element in their ideology.
    For the first time ever, the Balkars are saying “we are not simply a minority, there are 500 million of us” – “the first time in history of Russia or at least post-Soviet Russia,” the Moscow analyst says, when an openly “pan-Turkist” ideological agenda was articulated in the region with such vigor.
    The situation in neighboring Karachayevo-Cherkessia represents another Turkic challenge, Bokov suggests. There, “the Turkic ethnos, the Karachay, is the dominant one, and the Cherkess [Circassians] the minority. But again the Turkic group is advancing its interests by ignoring the practice of giving the second most powerful position in the republic to a Cherkess.
    Bokov argues that Turkey and other countries interested in weakening Russia. While Ankara carefully avoids public support of such groups lest it offend the Europeans or stimulate its own Kurdish minority, various groups in Turkey are increasingly active because “what is impossible at the official level is completely permissible at others.”
    He points to groups like TIKA, the Turkish Agency for Cooperation and Development, Turksoy, an organization involved in cultural ties with Turkic peoples abroad, and Tusam, an information-analytic center supported by the metal workers union, as being especially active in this regard.
    But he suggests that pan-Turkist ideas are being pushed not only by Turkey but by various Western countries and by both Georgia and Ukraine, who have an obvious interest in weakening Moscow’s influence and power in the region. And he concludes by arguing that Moscow must be prepared to counter all these groups.

    http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2008/11/window-on-eurasia-moscows-moves-in.html