A few days after the recent wave of earthquakes hit Turkey and Syria a close contact, a friend with a Turkish wife, wrote to me: “Luckily we’re all safe, but some of our friends’ relatives are still buried under the rubble. Many of the rescue problems can be attributed to the terrible performance of the AFAD, the ruling Turkish political party, personally directed by the dictator…

In Tbilisi, as in any other European capital, you will see Turkish restaurants. There has always been a Turkish community in Georgia, and neighbouring Azerbaijan is a Turkic state, speaking a similar language. So there is nothing unusual about Georgia being like everywhere else in this regard. However Georgia is a very nationalistic country…