Presidential Elections in Northern Cyprus: The Same Old Candidates, the Same Old Issues and Solutions on Offer On October 11, eleven men will face off in the presidential election of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). This will be the 10th presidential election for the Turkish Cypriots since 1974, when military coup d’etat … #Blog Posts 08.10.2020
New Caledonia on Its Way to Independence: Third Times’s the Charm? On 12 July 1998, Christian Karembeu added a FIFA World Cup trophy to his already impressive collection of awards. He was part of France’s winning team, which included several players from the former French colonial empire, and … #Blog Posts 07.10.2020
Will Armenia Recognize the Independence of Nagorno-Karabakh? Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) has not been recognized by any UN member state, including Armenia. There have been some rumors about Uruguay’s willingness to recognize NKR’s independence as well as Tuvalu’s intentions to establish diplomatic relations. So far, … #Blog Posts 01.10.2020
The Conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine in Kremlin’s Transcripts We live at times when the amount of information useful for analysis exceeds our human capacities to analyse it directly. But our technological ingenuity helps us out. There are tools that can automatically collect texts from online sources … #Blog Posts 24.09.2020
Looking into Complex Regional Dynamics of Iraqi Kurdistan Iraqi Kurdistan is a complicated place. We cannot drink the tap water, women cannot walk down the street alone without being harassed, but if you want to look like Kim Kardashian you are free to inject fillers into … #Blog Posts 24.08.2020
The Somaliland-Taiwan Partnership: A New Frontier in De Facto State Diplomacy? On July 1, 2020, Somaliland and Taiwan formally announced a bilateral accord which will see Somaliland open a representative office in Taipei and Taiwan open a representative office in Hargeisa. Interestingly, in its official statement announcing the … #Blog Posts 13.08.2020
Scenarios of Power in De Facto States: Karabakh’s 2020 Presidential Inauguration All states have their iconographies and rituals designed to project their legitimacy and power. They organize space as sacred patrimony and time as memory, anniversary and the eternal. Presidential inaugurations are occasions where we see this process … #Blog Posts 20.07.2020
The Road to Annexation is Growing Narrower by the Minute President’s Trump’s peace plan, which includes the controversial measure of annexing parts of Area C in the West Bank and settlements under Israel rule, is progressively drifting further and further away from its initial specifications. Its implementation … #Blog Posts 03.07.2020
COVID-19 in De Facto States The COVID-19 pandemic has presented an almost insurmountable issue for the majority of the world’s governments—official and de facto alike– to fight. In de facto states– typified for their often informal and fractured structure– COVID-19 has presented … #Blog Posts 19.06.2020
Nagorno-Karabakh: Between COVID-19 and Transition of Power Amid the global and regional turmoil caused by COVID-19, the de-facto Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR) had to face not only the pandemic and its economic implications, but also undergo a transition of power, for the first time … #Blog Posts 14.05.2020