Events and opinions

Fidel is dead, and now, buried. Some will call him the last of the Cold Warriors. But there are still plenty of regimes that have been in power for decades. Are they frozen in time, or is change bubbling beneath the surface? In each case, the answer may depend on how long political power can be kept within the family. A look at five of the longest-ruling regimes in the world, and where they go from here.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev has won a tightly controlled presidential election in Uzbekistan, raising questions about whether he will rule in the steps of former strongman Islam Karimov. Who is he and what can we expect from him?

Sanjar Umarov is a former political prisoner and founder of Sunshine Uzbekistan, an international political coalition aimed at improving the economic and political situation in Uzbekistan.

Following an intervention of attorney General Costas Clerides and Central Bank of Cyprus governor Chrystalla Georghadji, the parliament’s watchdog committee postponed a debate scheduled for today on how the Famagusta-Larnaca Cooperative Bank accepted a €33m deposit from funds which were in possession of the late Kazakh former official Rakhat Aliyev, lawmakers said.

The grandson of Kazakhstan’s authoritarian President Nursultan Nazarbayev took to social media on Wednesday to blast members of his grandfather’s inner circle after he lost a vote to head the country’s soccer association.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted by Hurriyet on Sunday as saying that “Turkey should first of all feel relaxed about the EU and not be fixated” about joining it. He added, “Some may criticize me but I express my opinion. For example, I have said ‘why shouldn’t Turkey be in the Shanghai Five?’”

Operating since 2015, the Eurasian Economic Union formed (EEU) over a relatively short period of time, and passed through all three stages of integration - from the customs union established in 2010 to the single market in 2012, culminating with the integrated economic union, which included coordination of the individual state economic policies starting in 2015.

A new banknote with Nazarbayev’s image and a possible eponymous renaming of Astana may signal a potential departure.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said he won’t hand power to his children to succeed him, as the former Soviet Union’s longest-serving ruler delays democratic reforms amid the country’s worst economic downturn in nearly two decades.