While reporting from the South Caucasus has recently focused on Azerbaijan’s victory in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, it is important to recognise the renewed importance of the Nakhchivan region. This autonomous republic is quickly becoming a key part of regional politics.

An interview with Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, former chairman of the NATO Military Committee and Italian defence minister. Interviewer: Vazha Tavberidze.

Turkey’s incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently secured another term in office in late May. While this development may suggest “business as usual”, Ankara’s future relationship with the wider world remains very much uncertain.

The earthquakes that took place in Turkey on February 6th 2023 caused a massive amount of death and injury. In response, Azerbaijan has made moves to help the Turkish people by supporting them in every way possible. The Azerbaijani assistance has only encouraged greater cooperation, and relations between the two countries have now been taken to the next level.

February 7th 2023 is a day that will forever be etched in the memory of the people of Kahramanmaraş and Hatay in Turkey’s Anatolia region. This was the day when two tragic 7.7 magnitude earthquakes struck the region, causing massive destruction and loss of life. The world watched in horror as images of the devastation and despair filled our screens. At the time of writing, the earthquake has claimed the lives of half a million people in the affected cities. Yet, in the midst of this tragedy, something remarkable happened.

Ankara and Yerevan’s ongoing talks to normalise relations could result in radical change at both the bilateral and regional level. Despite this, various historical and contemporary issues continue to challenge this process.

Azerbaijan’s decade-long balanced foreign policy between Russia and the West took a decisive turn after last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh, highlighted by a greater emphasis on military alignment with an increasingly assertive Turkey. Ankara and Baku also came together to shape a nucleus for tripartite configurations with countries in different parts of the globe – Pakistan being an essential one to build a solid international base for supporting Azerbaijan’s cause on the Karabakh issue.

A conversation with Candan Badem, a Turkish historian and participant of the Scholars at Risk (SAR) programme. Interviewer: Krzysztof Popek

KRZYSZTOF POPEK: You are the first participant of the Scholars at Risk (SAR) programme in Poland and your host is the Villa Decius Institute for Culture and the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. SAR protects scholars suffering from threats to their lives, liberty and well-being by arranging temporary research and teaching positions. Why were you forced to leave Turkey?

CANDAN BADEM: Since September 2016, I have not been allowed to teach or even participate in symposia at Turkish universities due to a state of emergency decree of the Recep Erdoğan regime. After the attempted coup d’état in July 2016, linked to Fethullah Gülen, an Islamist preacher who was Erdoğan’s former ally, Erdoğan announced a state of emergency and purged the opposition (along with Gülen’s supporters) from their jobs in state institutions, including universities. We still do not have key information on this attempted coup since the Erdoğan regime does not want to disclose the details and prevents a parliamentary investigation.

The truce was announced on November 9th and aims to end the current round of hostilities in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone which lasted for more than six weeks. This game-changing agreement, which will bring Russian peacekeepers to the break-away region, has caused protests and political upheaval in Armenia and celebrations in Azerbaijan.

When Turkey's relationship with the Black Sea is viewed through the lens of geopolitics, it becomes clear that Russia will never be far away.

The recent outbreak of fighting over the small mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh has a different context than previous clashes or the war in the early 1990s. Nevertheless, regardless of whether or not the current fighting will result in a long-lasting and all-out war, the conflict is poised to remain unsolvable for the foreseeable future.

Turkey’s policy in the Black Sea, which mainly aims to deter NATO’s presence in the region, has diminished its overall role, making it more vulnerable to Russia’s growing influence. Russian’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a clear signal that the Black Sea is gradually becoming a Russian lake, upsetting the equilibrium that has been in place for nearly a century.

Despite centuries of political and military conflicts and other power dynamics around the Black Sea, there has never been a period in history when a common conception of the Black Sea region existed – not even among the littoral states. Accordingly, the Black Sea region has gradually evolved into a unit of analysis, a sort of framework under which certain power dynamics are analysed by different scholars and policy-makers.

Despite more than five hundred years of Turkish rule, the majority of present-day Bulgarians demonise and reject “non-Bulgarian” – that is, Turkish, Muslim, or Roma – influences in their history and culture. While the Bulgarian government’s harshest policies of ethnic cleansing concluded with the fall of communism, this exclusivist narrative of Bulgarian national history nevertheless continues to discriminate against such communities.