Water Scarcity and Water Trade: Turkish Attempts to Supply a Drying Region

Water scarcity is already causing serious challenges nowadays and devastating water-related processes will certainly continue for decades to come. The emerging water crisis requires new political arrangements, new technological solutions and the development of new water supply chains. Among the possible political-diplomatic answers, water trade may be a viable option, as water abundant countries could distribute resources by commercializing their water surplus. Water trade, however, faces serious obstacles. Dependence of different countries on states that have water surplus, political leverage and the possible opportunity when external powers could control the essentially important human needs are all examples of potential risks. These threats hinder the development of interstate water trade cooperation and orient countries struggling with water shortages towards domestic solutions. This study attempts to examine the practice of water scarcity and water diplomacy, while also applies the Turkish experience as a case study for demonstrating constraints of water trade. The paper will hopefully shed light on the threats posed by global and regional water scarcity and draw attention to the opportunities and limitations of water commercialization. The aim of our study is to outline the issues related to the distribution and trade of water, furthermore to present the problems of water as a product. Our research focuses primarily on Turkey, which has also become involved in water trade, but the story still ended in failure.

Demokratický deficit v islámských zemích

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) identified in 2002 three fundamental areas of human development in which the Arab world lags behind the rest of the world. One of those specified areas was the lack of freedom and democracy. To investigate the presence of the democratic deficit, the study introduces a composite democracy index that measures and compares countries’ performances in the democratic domains. This paper aims to define and describe the democratic deficit in the context of the Islamic world, verify its existence in the Arab world, and determine its possible presence in other Muslim countries in various world regions. The study results showed that although the deficit was formulated almost twenty years ago, it is still relevant. It has been observed that Muslim countries performed, on average, worse on the index score than non-Muslim countries, which means that the Islamic countries face the democratic deficit. Moreover, the results showed that the performance of the Arab world in the democratic index is even worse than that of the other Muslim countries. The analysis additionally confirmed that the economic factor is important in verification of the deficit and its depth. On the level of individual countries, poor Muslim states often achieved the worst results, usually from the group of the least developed countries, such as Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, or Eritrea.

The Belarusian Orthodox Church and Its Role in the Belarusian Regime

This text, conceived as an interpretative case study, deals with the role that the Belarusian Orthodox Church plays in the contemporary Belarusian regime. In light of the fact that the Belarusian Orthodox Church is an exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, the author will also look at whether the Belarusian Orthodox Church can actually be considered an instrument of Russian in Belarus. Within the research, the author will show that on the one hand, there are favorable conditions for the development of the Belarusian Orthodox Church. But on the other hand, although the state declares the de facto independence of the Belarusian Orthodox Church, any opposition activity on its part is seen as a threat to the state, which allows the state to interfere with its policy. This leads church organizations in such systems to become significantly weakened within this “cooperation with the state”, even though they have an influence on society and thus a legitimizing potential. As a result, the church is strongly dependent on the state and limited as an actor in civil society within the Belarusian regime. In addition, the author will also conclude in the study that it is difficult to consider the Belarusian Orthodox Church to be a tool of the Kremlin’s influence.