11:55 pm, St. Petersburg time

-Why let the military have all the fun? Obama proposes "civilian expeditionary force" for Afghanistan.

-Swimming race in Istanbul across the Bosphorus

-100 days of Rustem Mingnihanov! But they still haven't given him control of the republic's website.

-Multiple translations of Nagorno-Karabakh text sparks debate in Yerevan  

-Eleven PKK fighters killed in Turkey. Erdogan's "drown them in blood " plan seems to be working. 


7:31 pm

-Hillary Clinton is headed to Baku on July 4. Nagorno-Karabakh will be on the agenda. As I discussed last year , the US has been knee-deep involved in getting Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia together for quite some time. Others speculate , meanwhile, that the US sees the Caucasus as a possible new route for re-supplying military forces in Afghanistan.

-Two Turkish journalists are in court after 8-month wait in detention, accused of being part of the Ergenekon "gang." Don't confuse these two with two other journalists who are likewise facing prison time over their writings on Ergenekon. Just last week, meanwhile, the newspaper Aksam was sued over its Ergenekon-related reporting.

Ergenekon is an amazing story, and it was partly due to what I considered to be the generally crummy reporting on Ergenekon [i.e., news stories that treated the investigation at face value, like a Turkish version of the Italian "clean hands" investigation into the mafia many years ago] that I modernized my blog last year and started writing more on Turkish politics. My posts on the Ergenekon process can be found here.
 
-Yigal Schleifer has got something on Turkish-Israeli relations.

-Turkey apparently has the second fastest-growing economy in the G20. And I'm taller than Xenia.

-Even a conservative wants to cut defense spending. It would be nice to see more folks on the left speak out on this.

-Since everyone has got spying on the brain these days, here's something on police and FBI spying on civilians in the United States—no need for Russians.

-Black water outside of Baku. Here's what people on the Gulf Coast have to look forward to. At least the folks in Mississippi and Louisiana can take comfort in the fact that they've consistently supported politicians fighting regulation in the oil & gas industry.

-The Taliban attack a NATO base with a rocket, then others storm it before being repelled. What's that? We've forgotten about Afghanistan again? Oh well.

-Matt Taibbi on CBS' Lara Logan and other sucky journalists

-McCain : let's keep pissing off Russia by doing more to support Georgia

-Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu meets Israeli minister, Israel signals that it may provide compensation for flotilla victims...

...does this mean that the 87 US Senators who sent a letter to Obama characterizing Israel's flotilla attack as "self-defense" will retract this observation?