Kazakhstan

Turkey and Kazakhstan will be two central countries in Eurasia in the fields of energy, trade and transportation, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu said Feb. 6.

Davuto?lu met Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev during a two-day official visit to Kazakhstan to further develop relations in the fields of transportation, energy and trade.      

The player of Spartak Moscow Ivelin Popov was awarded the best Bulgarian footballer of the year prize on Saturday.

Popov garnered 241 points, leaving behind him Palermo midfielder Ivaylo Chochev and CSKA Moscow midfielder Georgi Milanov.

Bulgarian Sports Minister Krasen Kralev handed the award to the captain of the Bulgarian men's national football team.

Saudi authorities have arrested nine American citizens among 33 "terror" suspects rounded up over the past days, the Saudi Gazette newspaper reported on Jan. 31. Four Americans were arrested on Jan. 25 and five others over the past four days, the paper reported citing an unidentified source.

Tajikistan's President Emomali Rakhmon on Jan. 27 named his eldest daughter his chief of staff, in the leader's latest appointment of a relative to a top post.

The president of the impoverished central Asian country appointed his 38-year-old daughter Ozoda Rakhmon to the role after she served as deputy foreign minister since 2014, Rakhmon's office said.

Turkcell is looking for acquisition opportunities to expand regionally and Iran could be a target market as sanctions against Tehran are lifted, the chief executive of Turkey's largest mobile operator said on Jan. 18.

The weighted average of the Kazakh tenge fell to a fresh all-time low of 356.88 per dollar on the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange on Jan. 11 from 351.88 on the previous trading day.

Iraq has extended a ban on imports of frozen and live poultry products to cover two dozen countries, including China and South Africa, the government said on Jan. 10.

Baghdad last month restricted poultry imports from France, where an outbreak of avian flu has been reported. 

Russia and Armenia have decided to unify their defense systems in order to strengthen their air frontiers in the Caucasus. 

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and his Armenian counterpart, Seyran Ohanyan, signed an agreement on Dec. 23 to form a "Joint Air Defense System" in the Caucasus. 

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev said on Dec. 23 the devaluation of the national manat currency this week had been made inevitable by a sharp decline in world oil prices.

The negative rhetoric in the war of words between Turkey and Russia is on the decline amid heightened tensions in the wake of Turkey's downing of a Russian warplane, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavu?o?lu said on Dec. 11.