Russia's War on Ukraine: the Perspectives of Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Turkey

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Dr. Filiz Tutku Aydin is an Assistant Professor at the Social Sciences University of Ankara. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Toronto in 2012 and taught there. She returned to Turkey under TUBITAK returning scholars program in 2014. She has a book titled “Émigré, Exile, Diaspora and Transnational Movements of Crimean Tatars: Preserving the Eternal Flame” published by Palgrave, and she edited a forthcoming book on the occupation of Crimea in Turkish. She has published in Communist and Post-Communist Studies and several journals in Turkey and Ukraine, and has several book chapters, published in English, Romanian and Crimean Tatar. She completed a research project titled “Protection and enforcement of minority rights in the post-Soviet space between 1991-2014: Comparing the cases of Tatarstan, Chechnia in Russia and Crimean Tatars and Russians in Ukraine” funded by TUBITAK. Ms. Aydın is a member of the Crimean Tatar diaspora from Ankara, Turkey. She contributed the letter of “Statement of Concerned Scholars on the Current Predicament of the Crimean Tatars” to protest the Russian annexation of Crimea and participated in the Second World Crimean Tatar Congress in July 2015.

David R. Marples is a Distinguished University Professor of Russian and East European History, University of Alberta. He is the author of sixteen single-authored books, including Understanding Ukraine and Belarus (2020), Ukraine in Conflict (2017), Our Glorious Past: Lukashenka’s Belarus and the Great Patriotic War (2014), and Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine (2008). He has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals. He has also edited four books on nuclear power and security in the former Soviet Union, contemporary Belarus, and Ukraine. At the University of Alberta, he received the J. Gordin Kaplan Award for Excellence in Research (2003) and the University Cup in 2008. In 2009, he was Visiting Fellow for the Wirth Institute at the Department of Contemporary European History, University of Innsbruck where he taught a course on Ukraine and Belarus as EU Border Countries. In 2013, he was Visiting Fellow at the Slavic and Eurasian Center, Hokkaido University, Japan.

Ghia Nodia is professor of politics and director of the International School of Caucasus Studies in Ilia Chavchavadze State University in Tbilisi, Georgia. He is also a founder of the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development (CIPDD), an independent public policy think tank in Tbilisi, Georgia and member of the Forum’s NDRI think tank network, which he has led since August 2009 and in 1992-2008. In February–December 2008, he served as the minister for education and science of Georgia. Prof. Nodia has published extensively on democratization; state-building, security, and conflicts in Georgia and the Caucasus; theories of nationalism; and democratic transition in the post-cold-War context. He has been involved in pro-democracy advocacy efforts in Georgia and internationally and has been a frequent participant of international congresses and conferences on related topics.

Edward Schatz is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He recently published Slow Anti-Americanism: Social Movements and Symbolic Politics in Central Asia with Stanford University Press. His previous books include Paradox of Power: The Logics of State Weakness in Eurasia (2017) and Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power (2009). Professor Schatz is currently working with Professor Rachel Silvey on a SSHRC-funded project about the downstream effects of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Lucan Way’s research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism in the former Soviet Union and the developing world. His most recent book (with Steven Levitsky), Social Revolution and Authoritarian Durability in the Modern World (forthcoming Princeton University Press) provides a comparative historical explanation of the extraordinary durability of autocracies born of violent social revolution. Professor Way’s solo authored book, Pluralism by Default: Weak Autocrats and the Rise of Competitive Politics (Johns Hopkins, 2015), examines the sources of political competition in the former Soviet Union. His book, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Steven Levitsky), was published in 2010 by Cambridge University Press. Way’s work on competitive authoritarianism has been cited thousands of times and helped stimulate new and wide-ranging research into the dynamics of hybrid democratic-authoritarian rule.