More than almost any other people in Eastern Europe, Hungarians see themselves as having special ties with Azerbaijan and the Turkic world, ties that reflect a distant but common origin of the two peoples in the Hunnic migration.  While that sense has always existed among Hungarians, it has grown stronger in the post-communist era.  And that provides a firm basis for the development of ties between Budapest and Baku. Because of their language, Hungarians have always viewed themselves as a Finno-Ugric people.  But in recent years, scholars, officials and ordinary citizens h...

The three countries of the South Caucasus are part of a larger borderland that includes the unstable republics in Russia’s North Caucasus.  Moreover, this borderland links Eastern Europe to the Middle East and involves regional powers like Turkey, Iran and Russia, as well as powers further abroad like the European Union and the United States.  As a result of the large number of players involved, the security dynamics in the region are especially complicated. This is not the first time the three countries of the South Caucasus have found themselves in this situation.  Aft...

At the end of April, significant progress was made toward the resolution of one of the trickiest diplomatic problems created by the demise of the Soviet Union: the delimitation of the Caspian Sea among the five states now surrounding it in place of the two that had been there prior to 1991.  While no final agreement was reached, and without such an accord, all agreements on specifics are only notional, the April 26-27 session of the special working group the presidents of the five littoral countries have created appears likely to be a breakthrough, one that may ultimately be ratifie...