Turkish Forum

Category: Azerbaijan

  • Gazprom-SOCAR gas deal: Should Azerbaijan commit to a long-term contract?

    Gazprom-SOCAR gas deal: Should Azerbaijan commit to a long-term contract?


    By Efgan Niftiyev
    Today’s Zaman

    WASHINGTON — In the last quarter of 2009, State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) and Russian gas giant Gazprom signed a medium-term deal — in the presence of both Azerbaijani President İlham Aliyev and Russian President Dimitry Medvedev — to supply Azerbaijani gas to Russia.

    The contract initially envisioned export of about 500 million cubic meters of gas per year.    Gazprom’s Web site said the two companies would conduct joint technical inspections of the 200-kilometer Baku-Novo Filya pipeline, which runs along Azerbaijan’s Caspian coast to the Russian border, and ultimately modernize the pipeline. “Azerbaijani gas will be supplied to Russia along this route,” the company’s Web site reported.

    A few months later, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller announced that his company is willing to buy as much Azerbaijani gas as possible. He also mentioned that Gazprom — the world’s biggest natural gas producer — will be paying market prices for Azerbaijani gas. SOCAR’s chief, Rovnag Abdullayev, also expressed his company’s interest in increasing the amount of natural gas sold to the Russian side. Since then, Gazprom has tried to push SOCAR for a long-term gas deal.

    At first it seems like a pretty good deal for Azerbaijan since Azerbaijan lacks a direct gas link to Europe and has been unable to agree with Turkey on terms for the transit of larger planned volumes. A SOCAR-Gazprom deal would be an excellent opportunity for Azerbaijanis to sell their gas at market prices right at the “door” without hassling with transit countries such as Turkey and Georgia or waiting for the implementation of the Nabucco pipeline. Thus, Gazprom’s network is the “optimal” route for gas from Azerbaijan to reach Europe.

    For diversification of export routes and for certain geopolitical and commercial reasons, Gazprom’s offer requires careful examination and analysis by the Azerbaijani side. As of now, Azerbaijan is capable of carrying out its commitments toward exporting approximately 1 billion cubic meters (bcm) to Russia (the Dagestan region) annually. The second phase of Shah Deniz gas production is expected to add 12 billion to 14 billion cubic meters of annual gas output in three to five years once a market is found and transit for the fuel ensured. Committing all possible gas supply to Gazprom beforehand cannot be viewed as a viable option for Azerbaijan.

    Azerbaijan may

    lose its bargaining power

    Early commitments to Gazprom will decrease Azerbaijan’s bargaining power in terms of pricing. Central Asian gas producers Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan had to sell their natural gas for significantly lower prices compared to world market prices because Gazprom was the only buyer. It was only when China became another possible buyer for Central Asian gas that the Russian company offered fairly good prices to Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.

    Along with commercial concerns, geopolitical ramifications of a possible long-term commitment to Gazprom cannot be disregarded. Russia is widely known to use its economic advantage as political leverage in dealing with its neighbors and other countries. In the cold winter of 2009, Russia did not hesitate to cut the gas supply to its consumers in order to push its political agenda forward. Since then, European countries have started looking for alternative natural gas supply routes. Russia’s intransigency forced them to think about their energy security and be cautious in their future dealings with Russia.

    In line with this new approach, the Nabucco pipeline has been proposed to create another supply route that is projected to bring about 31 bcm of natural gas to Europe. Gazprom applies different pricing approaches to different countries. The price that is given to Armenia — its closest ally in post-Soviet hinterland — is much lower than the prices given to Ukraine or Georgia, the latter started to import natural gas from Azerbaijan instead. Thus, it is not that hard to see political motivation in Gazprom’s business.

    Azerbaijani gas is one of the possible — maybe the most viable — sources to fill the Nabucco pipeline, and it is in Azerbaijan’s utmost interest to diversify its natural gas exporting options. Being a major supplier of the Nabucco pipeline would serve Azerbaijan’s interests, and Azerbaijan can play an important role in European energy security. Currently Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz is the only deposit mature enough to be considered a base for forming contracts for the Nabucco project.

    Russia with the hand of Gazprom is doing its best to cut the possible supply for Nabucco. It takes all re-export expenses and pledges to pay market prices for all future possible Azerbaijani exportable gas, meaning that to re-export Azerbaijani volumes, Gazprom would need to cut production and exports of Russian gas, its main source of profit. This makes Gazprom’s offer a politically motivated rather than commercially viable deal. If Azerbaijan happens to commit all its future exportable gas to the Russian company, the Nabucco project will receive a fatal blow, and Azerbaijan will become highly dependent on Russia to export its natural gas. This will ultimately enable Russia to gain more leverage in its relations with Azerbaijan, and Russia will hardly hesitate to use this leverage in dictating its political ambitions.

    ‘Absurd scenarios’

    Some argue that Azerbaijan may “bribe” Russia to make her apply pressure on Armenia so that Russia forces the latter to take a more constructive position in peace talks over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. This scenario is totally absurd. Although Russia has a great deal of political and economic influence on Armenia, this scenario is unlikely to happen because Russia is not interested in resolving the frozen Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, contrary to official Russian statements and its role as a mediator. Instead she has always used separatist conflicts to overpower post-Soviet countries. On the other hand, Azerbaijan, under the leadership of father Aliyev, pursued a similar purpose while making oil contracts with Western companies. Along with commercial gains, Azerbaijan expected to strengthen its bargaining position against Armenia while trying to become an important partner of the West. The commercial side of the story has played out quite well, and Azerbaijan also bolstered its independence and sovereignty. However, this policy did not produce desired outcomes for Azerbaijan in terms of making Western countries exert more pressure on Armenia. For all these reasons, it would not be wise for Azerbaijan to pursue the same tactic in its dealings with Russia.

    Azerbaijan has to consider all possible ramifications of signing long-term deals with Gazprom and granting all its possible exportable gas to the Russian company. Azerbaijan should never be willing to experience what Turkmenistan experienced in its dealings with Gazprom. Gazprom’s unilateral reduction — at short notice — of the gas that it takes from Turkmenistan showed that Gazprom is far from being reliable and has the potential to carry out irresponsible actions. Along with Gazprom’s credibility, commercial viability and geopolitical implications of the agreement should be carefully analyzed given Gazprom’s stature as a reliable and a credible gas buyer. Having vast natural sources is not enough. The wise management of those sources is much more important.

  • ALZ”HYE”MER’S DISEASE

    ALZ”HYE”MER’S DISEASE

    Not to be confused with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) which is the most common form of dementia. This degenerative and terminal disease was named after the psychiatrist and neuropathologist that first described it. In the early stages, the most commonly recognized symptom is memory loss. This is an incurable disease striking millions of aging people every year. This is not what I am talking about in ALZ”HYE”MER’S disease.
    ALZ”HYE”MER’S is more of a later stage, quirky disease that inexplicably develops in patients already suffering from BOGUS GENOCIDIS, a curable social disease with a commonly recognized symptom of severe “SELECTIVE MEMORY LOSS”. The ALZ”HYE”MER’S DISEASE sufferers will hate Turks, Muslims, and anyone who disagrees with Armenians, forget only those facts that refute their claims.
    For instance, ALZ”HYE”MER’S DISEASE sufferers will remember 1915, but not 1914 when the Armenians terrorists, revolutionaries, and ultra-nationalists took up arms against their own government, attacked the rear of their own army, garrisons, banks, schools, and even their neighbors causing wide spread death and destruction.
    ALZ”HYE”MER’S DISEASE sufferers will remember temporary resettlement order of May 1915 but not the Van Revolt Armenians staged, killing 40,000 Muslims, mostly Turks and Kurds, and turning the city over to the invading Russian armies. They cannot appreciate that this Van Revolt was the equivalent of 9/11 for the Ottoman Government and the April 24 decision to arrest the leaders of Armenian insurgency, terrorism, and fifth column as the equivalent of Guantanamo.
    ALZ”HYE”MER’S DISEASE sufferers will remember Morgenthau (who was a rabid Turk-hater allowing his Armenian secretaries to falsify events in diplomatic reports and who posed as a career diplomat, historian, and a writer, but in fact, he was none of those, other than a real estate agent and a developer who raised the most money for Wilson campaign in 1912 and was rewarded with an ambassadorial post) but not Bristol who replaced him and refuted his claims of one-sided massacres with no provocation. They will also not remember Harbord, Niles, and Sutherland, all honorable U.S. soldiers who were commissioned to tour the war torn areas and report on their findings and which findings also refuted Armenian tall tales of extermination.
    ALZ”HYE”MER’S DISEASE sufferers will remember Armenian women and children marching to scorching deserts but not Muslim women and children marching to freezing mountains under threat of death by Armenians and/or Russians just prior to former. They will remember their march but not others’ marches at the same time, same area, and due to same wartime conditions. They will also not remember Armenian complicity in war crimes and hate crimes that resulted in the TERESET (temporary resettlement). They will totally forget the six T’s of the Turkish-Armenian conflict: tumult (as in many bloody revolts), terrorism, treason, territorial demands, Turkish dead, and TERESET.
    ALZ”HYE”MER’S DISEASE sufferers will remember the fake claim of 1.5 million alleged Armenian dead, but not remember the March 29, 1919 Paris Peace conference report setting the loss of Armenians at “more than 200,000”. They will also not remember how, magically by a crooked Armenian printer, this number was tripled within two months, as seen in a poster soliciting American aid in churches claiming 600,000 Armenian dead. They will also forget how this shenanigans was further increased to 800,000 with the flick of a pen in a New York Times article and late to a million and even 1.5 million today. Armenian dead are the only known case in humanity where the DEAD MULTIPLY!
    ALZ”HYE”MER’S DISEASE sufferers will remember to tell the world the shameless lies of Turks burning the city of Izmir in 1922 but not the 22 Armenian Dashnak terrorists dressed up as Turkish soldiers who started the fires to avenge Turkish victory and to leave no prize behind for the Turkish victors.
    As the ALZ”HYE”MER’S DISEASE advances, symptoms include confusion, irritability, aggression, mood swings, language breakdown, threats, intimidation and even violence at the sight of a Turk. This disease, as strange and self-imposed as it is, is reversible if truth can be administered to aggressive, violent, and deceptive patients.
    First, shock the patient with the photos of Armenian murderers and their Turkish victims at www.ethocide.com and follow up with a generous dose of truth with the “Six T’s of the conflict”. Watch for signs of life. If the patient responds favorably, then introduce him to legendary Turkish hospitality. Watch for fake signs of recovery or early signs of relapse. Some patients can be very dangerous. That said, there is always hope for full recovery of the patients if they see Turkish doctors.
    ***
    “HYE” IS THE CURSE
    Hye is “Armenian” in the Armenian language. This tiny word, “hye”, is almost always used in such embarrassing company, however, that the “hyes” prefer to call themselves some other word, Armenians, in English.
    When one takes the liberty to stretch the root “hy” fully as “hye”—as I am sure you will extend the courtesy to me to freely exercise of such an entertaining thought process—then one sees nothing but diseases, suffering, and morbid characters attached to the root “hye”. Check it out yourselves:
    ***

    “HYE”STERIA
    A state of extreme or exaggerated emotion such as excitement or panic, especially among large numbers of people. ( Does this description remind you of some people in an otherwise normal and beautiful city called Glendale? I don’t know about you, but it sure reminds me of perennial resolutions, deceptive memorials, and overall obsession with hate, vengeance, and death. Brrr. )
    ***

    “HYE”PE
    To agitate; to create interest in dramatic methods; to intensify (advertising, promotion, or publicity) by questionable claims, methods; to trick; to gull, to deceive, to trick, or to cheat; as a noun: swindle, deception, or trick; but also: a drug addict, esp. one who uses a hypodermic needle. ( Agitation, cheating, swindle, deception, trick? Hmmm… Why do these terms always come up when Armenian claims are discussed?)
    There are more jewels in the history of the term “HYE”PE: “excessive or misleading publicity or advertising,” 1967, Amer. Eng. (the verb is attested from 1937), probably in part a back-formation of hyperbole, but also from underworld slang sense “swindle by overcharging or short-changing” (1926), a back-formation of hyper “short-change con man” (1914), from prefix hyper- meaning “over, to excess.” Also possibly influenced by drug addicts’ slang hype, 1913 shortening of hypodermic needle. In early 18c., hyp “morbid depression of the spirits” was colloquial for hypochondria (usually as the hyp or the hyps).
    ***
    “HYE”POCHONDRIA
    Often referred to as health phobia or health anxiet refers to an excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness. Often, “HYE”POCHONDRIA persists even after a physician has evaluated a person and reassured them that their concerns about symptoms do not have an underlying medical basis or, if there is a medical illness, the concerns are far in excess of what is appropriate for the level of disease. Many people suffering from this disorder focus on a particular symptom as the catalyst of their worrying, such as gastro-intestinal problems, palpitations, or muscle fatigue or Turks.
    “HYE”POCHONDRIA is often characterized by fears that minor bodily symptoms may indicate a serious illness, constant self-examination and self-diagnosis, and a preoccupation with one’s body. (Preoccupation? Could it be the pre-occupation with genocide lies and slanders?)
    Many individuals with “HYE”POCHONDRIASIS express doubt and disbelief in the doctors’ diagnosis, and report that doctors’ reassurance about an absence of a serious medical condition is unconvincing. Many “HYE”POCHONDRIACS require constant reassurance, either from doctors, family, or friends, and the disorder can become a disabling torment for the individual with “HYE”POCHONDRIASIS, as well as his or her family and friends. Some “HYE”POCHONDRIACAL individuals are completely avoidant of any reminder of illness, whereas others are frequent visitors of doctors’ offices. (Could these doctors be Schiff, Palone, Menendez, and Berman, et. al.?)
    ***
    “HYE”NA
    This one is my favorite because the definition fits like a glove the character of Armenian falsifier and Turk-hater. Here it is:
    “Carnivorous but only for carrion, these ugly, smelly animals with their raucous voices and hysterical-sounding laughter are offensive in most ways. Doglike nocturnal mammal that feeds chiefly on carrion. Famed scavengers and often dine on the leftovers of other predators. The Maasai people of Kenya and Tanzania actually leave their dead to be consumed by hyenas. In some areas they have been heavily hunted as destructive pests. Although hyenas appear similar to dogs, they are actually more closely related to cats. They live throughout much of Africa and eastwards through Arabia to India. Spotted hyenas live together in large groups called clans. Packs work together effectively to isolate a herd animal, sometimes one that is ill or infirm, and pursue it to the death. The victors often squabble over the spoils. Spotted hyenas are quite vocal and make a wide variety of sounds, including the “laughing resolutions” that has long been associated with their name.”
    (Wow, that’s what I call “hole in one”!)
    ***

    THE ARMENIAN REVOLUTIONARY FEDERATION: DEEP TERROR & PSYCHOSIS
    PSYCHOSIS , a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a ‘loss of contact with reality’, points to an abnormal condition of the mind. People suffering from psychosis are said to be psychotic.
    When I deal with Armenian falsifiers and Turk-haters (i.e. the AFATH community with some exceptions, of course) I am reminded of this psychiatric term. Loss of contact with reality is not a new phenomenon in the AFATH community. Even the first prime minister of the short-lived Armenia (1918-1920) described the same phenomenon in his address to the ARF convention in Bucahrest in July, 1923. Here are his words :
    “… We had created a dense atmosphere of illusion in our minds. We had implanted our own desires into the minds of others; we had lost our sense of reality and were carried away with our dreams. From mouth to mouth, from ear to ear passed mysterious words purported to have been spoken in the palace of the Viceroy; attention was called to some kind of a letter by Vorontzov-Dashkov to the Catholicos as an important document in our hands to use in the presentation of our rights and claims — a cleverly composed letter with very indefinite sentences and generalities which might be interpreted in any manner, according to one’s desire.

    “ We overestimated the ability of the Armenian people, its political and military power, and overestimated the extent and importance of the services our people rendered to the Russians. And by overestimating our very modest worth and merit we were naturally exaggerating our hopes and expectations.

    “ The deportations and mass exiles and massacres which took place during the Summer and Autumn of 1915 were mortal blows to the Armenian Cause. Half of historical Armenia —the same half where the foundations of our independence would be laid according to traditions inherited from the early eighties and as the result of the course adopted by European diplomacy — that half was denuded of Armenians: the Armenian provinces of Turkey were without Armenians. The Turks knew what they were doing and have no reason to regret today. It was the most decisive method of extirpating the Armenian Question from Turkey.

    Again, it would be useless to ask today to what extent the participation of volunteers in the war was a contributory cause of the Armenian calamity. No one can claim that the savage persecutions would not have taken place if our behavior on this side of the frontier was different, as no one can claim the contrary, that the persecutions would have been the same even if we had not shown hostility to the Turks. This is a matter about which it is possible to have many different opinions…” [1]
    That PSYCHOSIS, loss of touch with reality, a cultivated and treasured Armenian trait, has been evident in every phase of Armenian past and even more so at present. Armenia, a land-locked, poverty stricken, corrupt, aggressive and violent little regime still hopes to survive with all the Armenian war crimes and hate crimes unaddressed.
    They seriously believe that aggression in Karabakh, capture by brutal aggression of the seven provinces of Azerbaijan surrounding Karabakh, forcing a million Azeri men, women, and children out of their homes, into exile on their own soil, keeping the ethnically cleansed areas under a ruthless military occupation, passionately pursuing irredentist policies claiming territories of all neighbors (such as eastern Anatolia from Turkey, Javakheti region from Georgia, northwestern region from Iran, and who knows what from Russia and others) will somehow be kept away from the negations table just because Armenians says so. Dream on psychotics, dreaming is free. What is not free is breaking the isolation around Armenia. There is a cost for that: rollback to 1991. The Armenian aggression and ethnic cleansing will not stand, with or without protocols, and the sooner Armenia sees this, the better it is for Armenia. Otherwise Armenia will be relegated to dustbin of history soon as a distant, inaccessible, and inhospitable province of vast Russia. That possibility is not far fetched considering the facts that the Russians already own 80% of the country, including but not limited to transportation, energy, telecommunications, and more. Russians even stamp your passport as you enter the scary country and stand watch on its borders.
    [1] The Manifesto of Hovhannes Katchaznouni, First Prime Minister of the Independent Armenian Republic), Translated from the Original by Matthew A. Callender. Edited by John Roy Carlson (Arthur A. Derounian). Published by the Armenian Information Service, Suite 7D, 471, Park Ave., New York 22. 1955 Price 75c
    ***
    Inflicted with ALZ”HYE”MER’S DISEASE, Armenians choose to selectively forget the other side of the story which involves Armenian revolts, terrorism, raids, assassinations, bomb attacks, treason, Turkish victims, and TERESET (temporary resettlements.) Then they display selective morality, grieving only for Armenian suffering, totally ignoring the suffering the Armenians caused others. Armenian psychosis , or ‘loss of contact with reality’, while pointing to an abnormal condition of the mind, will no longer be allowed to destroy peace in the Caucasus, the middle east, or the west.
    A healthy dose of truth and reality should spoil the free lunch of laughing hyenas still feeding on the Turkish corpses of the World War One after 100 years or precisely known Azeri corpses of Karabakh, the seven surrounding provinces of Azerbaijan, and Khodjaly, after 18 years.

  • BEGINNING OF THE END FOR ARMENIAN PROPAGANDA AND “HYE”STERIA ?

    BEGINNING OF THE END FOR ARMENIAN PROPAGANDA AND “HYE”STERIA ?

    THIS CITY HAS RESCINDED THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RECOGNITION
    DECLARING THE RESOLUTION NULL AND VOID

    According to the news article below that appeared on April 2, 2010, in the largest daily in Turkiye, Hurriyet, this Ukranian city of Izyum, population 60,000 and about 80 miles from the capitol of Harkov province, Ukraine, has rescinded on March 26, 2010 the genocide resolution that it passed in December 2009, thus no longer recognizing the Armenian claims at face value. Citing a report by the Crimean News Agency, the article heralds the first decision of its kind anywhere, which may indeed, be a turning point, a beginning of the end, for the diaspora Armenian propaganda efforts.

    Rehim Hümbetov, president of the Crimean-Azerbaijani Association, they worked hard to get the Armenian propaganda annulled, by suing the resolution on grounds that it violated Ukranian law, that it should be reviewed and rescinded, and won after intensive efforts.

    Rehim Hümbetov stated that the time has come to wage an international effort to overturn all such resolutions misrepresenting Armenian propaganda as settled history.

    ***

    Wow! I wonder if the days of “hye”nas feeding on Turkish corpses of WWI may be over…

    Who knows?

    Anyway, Here is the original article:

    ***

    BU KENT TANIDIĞI ‘SOYKIRIMI’ IPTAL ETTI

    A.A. / hurriyet.com.tr , 2 Nisan 2010

    Ukrayna’nın Harkov bölgesindeki bir yerel belediye meclisi, 1915 olaylarına ilişkin Ermeni iddialarıyla ilgili daha önce kabul ettiği kararını iptal etti.

    Kırım Haber Ajansı’nın haberine göre, İzyum Şehir Belediye Meclisi, Aralık 2009’da kabul ettiği Ermeni iddialarıyla ilgili kararı, 26 Mart’ta yapılan toplantıda iptal etti.

    Haberde, Ukrayna’da alınan bu iptal kararının, dünyada 1915 olaylarıyla ilgili ilk iptal örneği olduğu belirtildi.

    Karara ilişkin açıklama yapan ve iptal kararının alınması için çok çalıştıklarını belirten Kırım Azerbaycanlılar Derneği Başkanı Rehim Hümbetov, “Artık Ermeni iddialarına ilişkin kabul edilen kararların iptali için uluslararası düzeyde mücadele etme vaktinin geldiğini” söyledi.

    Hümbetov, belediye meclisinin daha önce aldığı kararın, Ukrayna kanunlarına aykırı olduğunu belirterek, incelenmesi ve iptali için İzyum savcılığına da başvurduklarını ve yoğun çabalar sonucunda kararın iptal edilmesini sağladıklarını belirtti.

    Yaklaşık 60 bin nüfuslu şehir, Harkov’un merkezinden 120 kilometre uzaklıkta bulunuyor.

  • Azerbaijani-Israeli Relations Enter a New Stage

    Azerbaijani-Israeli Relations Enter a New Stage

    Gulnara Inandzh

    Director
    International Online Information Analytic Center Ethnoglobus,

    related info

    https://www.turkishnews.com/ru/content/

    [email protected]

    The upcoming June 28th 2009 visit to Baku by Israeli President Shimon Peres, a visit arranged during the May 6th meeting in Prague between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, opens a new stage in Azerbaijani-Israeli relations and reflects among other things Jerusalem’s desire to strengthen relations with former Soviet republics in the aftermath of Israeli operations in Gaza.

    In support of that effort, one marked out in the middle of 2008, the Israeli foreign ministry has established separate departments to deal with the European portion of the CIS, the South Caucasus and Central Asia, regions that had been the responsibility of the ministry’s broader Central European and Eurasian Department.  The new units are provisionally called Eurasia I (dealing with the European portion of the CIS) and Eurasia II (dealing with the South Caucasus and Central Asia).  The head of Eurasia II, which will also deal with Azerbaijan, is Shemi Tsur, the son of a Jewish returnee from the Iranian province of Eastern Azerbaijan (Falkov & Kogan 2009).

    Apparently, Israeli political technologists have been working on the strengthening of official contacts with Azerbaijan intensively.  Jewish groups in the West have been playing a major role in this and have conditioned their support for Azerbaijani interests on Baku’s opening of an embassy in Israel.  As official representatives of the two countries have noted, despite the absence of an Azerbaijani embassy in Israel and of a general treaty between Azerbaijan and Israel, there exist various interagency accords which are working extremely well.  As a result, Israel receives 30 percent of the oil it needs for internal use through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, and bilateral trade is constantly expanding.

    The absence of anti-Semitism in Azerbaijan, the good relations with Jews living in the country also help to fill the diplomatic vacuum.  At the same time, the opening of an embassy of a Muslim-majority state in Israel and the visit of the Israeli president to a Muslim country are a moral support and example for Jews of the entire world and the Jewish state itself.

    In this connection, it is worth noting that this is the second official visit of a senior Israeli official to Baku over the last decade.  In 1998, Benjamin Netanyahu, then and now the prime minister of Israel, after completing a visit to China spent the night in Baku.  After that time, no senior Israeli officials visited Azerbaijan for some years.  But beginning in 2006, when Avigdor Lieberman, the chairman of the Our Home is Israel party became minister for strategic affairs, the number of visits increased.  Lieberman himself visited Baku in the summer of 2007 just after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did.

    These efforts by Israeli and Western companies and organizations in Azerbaijan have been viewed by Iranian ideologues as part of a network directed against Iran.  One cannot deny that the overthrow of the current Tehran government or the forced change of its aggressive policy and the weakening of its position in the region are one of the key issues for Israel and the West and in particular the US.  As a result, the concern of Iran on this score cannot be considered baseless paranoia.

    On the other hand, with the assignment at the end of April 2009 of a new director of the Asian infrastructure of the Bureau for Ties with the Russian-language Jewish Diaspora Natif, Israel specified its policy concerning work with the diaspora in the CIS countries.  In that, Azerbaijan is presented as a major focus of Natif’s activities (Izrus 2009).  It could hardly be otherwise, given the Jewish communities of that country, as well as in Iran, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

    The Jewish lobby and Israel in recent years have attempted to establish contacts with their compatriots living in Iran.  In the meantime, the Southern Azerbaijanis who live in Iran represent another issue for relations between Baku and Tehran.  With the goal of removing the World Congress of Azerbaijanis out from under the influence of Iran, for example, a change in the leadership of the organization has occurred.  The Committee for work with compatriots was reformed into a structure for work with the diaspora, which thus reduced its focus on compatriots in areas adjoining Azerbaijan where Azerbaijanis have lived from time immemorial on their historical lands.

    As was already noted, if the visit of Shimon Peres to Baku bears a moral character for Jews, for Azerbaijan it is one additional opportunity to attract the attention of the world community and the entire Jewish world to Azerbaijan and to define new patterns of cooperation and the inclusion of Azerbaijan in new major trans-regional projects.  But as one might expect, Iran’s reaction has been aggressive, including overt threats to Azerbaijan.  Baku responded diplomatically but made it very clear that it did not intend to retreat from the meeting or from its expanding ties with the Jewish state.

    In spite of its threatening language, it is completely clear that Iran will not violate the borders of Azerbaijan as it did earlier.  And clearly, Azerbaijan was prepared for such an Iranian reaction, but in preparing for it, Baku recognized that neither the US nor Israel could advance an effective policy toward Iran without taking Azerbaijan into account.  Indeed, now economically and politically strong, Azerbaijan is capable of engaging itself in pro-active regional politics, as opposed to a defensive one it had adhered to before.


    References

    Falkov, Mikhail & Kogan, Alexander (2009) “Izrail’ otdel’no vzyalsya za Kavkaz I Tsentral’nuyu Aziyu” [“Israel Moved to Separately Deal with the Caucasus and Central Asia”], Izrus, 19 January, available at http://izrus.co.il/dvuhstoronka/article/2009-01-19/3449.html, accessed 13 June 2009.

    Izrus (2009) “’Nativ’ Izbral Kuratora po Tsentral’noy Azii I Kavkazu”, Izrus, 1 March, available at http://izrus.co.il/diasporaIL/article/2009-03-01/3883.html, accessed 14 June 2009.

    source  :

  • US Azerbaijanis campaign for elimination of funding for Nagorno-Karabakh

    US Azerbaijanis campaign for elimination of funding for Nagorno-Karabakh

    [ 25 Mar 2010 07:24 ]
    Washington. Isabel Levine–APA. US Congressman Frank Pallone Jr. along with 27 pro-Armenian members of Congress sent a letter to the chair and ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs, Azerbaijani Diaspora in US (USAN) told APA’s Washington DC correspondent.

    The congress members want to influence the State-foreign operations and related programs appropriations bill for the Fiscal year of 2011. They request that the subcommittee supports Congress’s funding request for US assistance to Armenia. Their argument is that Armenia is a very special partner of US and the bilateral relations will expand.

    They also continue to push for parity in military assistance between Armenia and Azerbaijan, opening contacts between the US and Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as increasing funding for Nagorno-Karabakh for humanitarian and developmental aid.

    Funding in the Fiscal Year 2010 Omnibus bill provided US$41 million for Armenia and US$8 million for Nagorno-Karabakh.

    In order to prevent this, the US Azerbaijanis Network decided to hold their own campaign, according to which every Azerbaijani American and whoever else, who wishes to support them, writes a letter to Congress members asking to eliminate the Fiscal Year 2011 funding for Nagorno-Karabakh and reduce aid to Armenia. Azerbaijanis also demand increasing the amount of the US funding for Azerbaijan.

  • IMPLICATIONS OF THE FAILED TURKISH-ARMENIAN NORMALIZATION PROCESS

    IMPLICATIONS OF THE FAILED TURKISH-ARMENIAN NORMALIZATION PROCESS

    Turkey Analyst,
    vol. 3 no. 5
    15 March 2010

    Svante E. Cornell

    In spite of great hopes and much foreign pressure, the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process can be said to have failed to bring about its intended result. Under current circumstances, the likelihood of the ratification of the Protocols signed in August 2009 is close to nil, barring some major turn of events. It is therefore time to reflect on the reasons that the process failed; and the implications for Turkey and the wider region. The process itself is in fact illustrative of the erroneous assumptions that Western political leaders appear to have harbored about regional realities.

    BACKGROUND: The Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process got serious on the inter-governmental level in 2008. (See Turkey Analyst, 10 April 2009 for background) Following Turkish President Abdullah Gül’s historic visit to Yerevan, Swiss mediation helped produce Protocols that would lead to the establishment of diplomatic relations and the opening of the common border. The Protocols, originally intended for signing in April 2009, were nevertheless not endorsed formally until August that year.

    Enormous external pressure – primarily from the White House – appears to have been the main reason that the Turkish and Armenian Foreign Ministers signed the Protocols. The presence at the signing ceremony of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana was indicative of the level of pressure on Ankara and Yerevan. Yet even then, the process almost broke down at the last minute, as differences on the ceremony itself led to a three hour long delay, which was only solved by shelving the intended declarations of the two signatories.

    This very delay suggested the lack of enthusiasm that had already begun to grip the Turkish and Armenian governments. Indeed, in the months that followed, it is difficult to avoid the perception that both governments – the Turkish perhaps slightly more than the Armenian – took steps to distance themselves from a process that neither felt comfortable with. In Yerevan, while the government asked the Constitutional Court for an interpretation, leading parliamentarians spoke of the need for an “exit strategy.” In Ankara, the government handed the Protocols to the parliament, but appeared perfectly happy to have it languish there rather than bring them to a vote of approval. As time passed, mutual incriminations ensued: Ankara seemed to seize on the Armenian Constitutional Court’s interpretations of the Protocols as an excuse to delay the process, while Yerevan threatened to shelve it entirely.

    By the spring of 2010, the process was hanging by a thread. Then came the passage (by a single vote’s margin) of a bill to recognize the 1915 massacres of Armenians as Genocide in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. As in previous years that this had happened, visceral reactions ensued in Turkey, including the recall of the Turkish Ambassador to Washington. More unexpected was the introduction and passage of a similar bill in the Swedish Parliament. That bill also passed by a single vote’s margin. In fact, both the ruling coalition government and the leadership of the main opposition Social Democratic Party were opposed to the bill. But because it had been pushed through as a binding resolution at the Social Democratic Party’s yearly Congress, and because four members of the ruling parties split ranks, it eventually passed. Taken together, these two resolutions stirred up emotions in the region – particularly in Turkey – adding what may have been the last two nails in the coffin of the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process.

    IMPLICATIONS: Time has thus come to evaluate why this process went wrong, and what implications are likely to emerge from this failure. The deeply negative effect of foreign parliaments’ meddling in historical truths exacerbated the difficulties in the process and may have helped kill it – if nothing else, given Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s reaction to threaten to expel 100,000 Armenian migrant workers living in Turkey. (In fact, the real number  is believed to be lower.) But as deplorable as the role of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Swedish Parliament may have been, they were not the root causes of the failure of the normalization process.

    One key reason, however, was that the process was allowed to proceed on the basis of divergent and erroneous assumptions. First, the tragedy of 1915 was a main cause of the discord between the two countries, and intimately connected with the normalization process. Ankara, rejecting the label of genocide, interpreted the Protocols as having moved that issue to a commission of historians to be created following ratification. Perhaps naively, Turkish leaders therefore expected the Diaspora Armenian push for genocide recognition to be eased – an unlikely prospect given Yerevan’s limited influence on the Diaspora, and the latter’s deep misgivings about the Protocols. But as the Armenian Constitutional Court made clear, Armenia interpreted the Protocols as in no way hindering the push for international recognition. As Armenian and allied groups kept pushing for recognition in both the U.S. and Europe, it became clear that the normalization process would not even temporarily relieve Turkey of that headache.

    The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict posed an even larger problem – but also one whose importance the Western powers fundamentally misunderstood. Turkey had originally closed its border with Armenia as a result of the Armenian occupation of the Azerbaijani province of Kelbajar – one of seven districts outside of the Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno-Karabach that Armenian forces occupied and ethnically cleansed during the war. To most Turks, therefore, some form of progress in the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations was a prerequisite for opening the border. In fact, Turkish leaders appear to have embarked on the process in the belief – entertained by American and Russian diplomats – that there was indeed a serious prospect for a breakthrough in the Armenian-Azerbaijani talks. As the AKP had not been closely involved in the conflicts in Caucasus prior to 2008, its leaders overlooked the fact that such imminent breakthroughs in the negotiations had been predicted frequently during the past fifteen years, without results. In other words, it was clear from the AKP leadership’s moves that it gambled on a breakthrough in negotiations that was never to be. (See Turkey Analyst, 14 September 2009 issue for background)

    If the Turkish government miscalculated, the West’s behavior was unrealistic. Egged on by NGOs such as the International Crisis Group, American and European leaders urged Ankara to de-link the Turkish-Armenian normalization process from the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. Positive ties between Turkey and Armenia, they argued, would lead Armenia to feel more secure, thereby more likely to make difficult concessions over Nagorno-Karabakh. Yet de-linking the two conflicts was both politically and practically impossible.

    To begin with, the Western logic did not play out. Having signed the Protocols, Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian lost a nationalist coalition partner and a good deal of domestic public support. Sarkisian thus moved to harden rather than soften Armenia’s negotiating stance in talks with Azerbaijan, putting those talks in peril.

    Secondly, whether one liked it or not, de-linking Turkish-Armenian ties from the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict was impossible in the Turkish domestic context. This has often been blamed on Azerbaijan’s supposed “lobbying” in Turkey. Reality is much simpler: most of the Turkish population and a significant share of the AKP voters and politicians (though not the top leadership) are strongly wedded to Turkic solidarity. Thus, the AKP leadership faced vehement nationalist opposition from within the party (not simply the nationalist opposition) to ratifying the Protocols without some progress on the Karabakh conflict. Given the close linguistic ties between Turkey and Azerbaijan, the AKP leadership knew that a single camera crew, filming from Azerbaijani refugee camps to which 800,000 people had been confined by Armenian conquests, could generate a public outcry against the government should it open the border without Armenian concessions. Rather than understanding this reality and putting serious efforts behind the diplomatic endeavors on Nagorno-Karabakh, the Western powers pushed harder for Ankara to de-link the two processes.

    Stuck in the Mountains of Karabakh?

    This was all the more remarkable given the recent history of the South Caucasus. Indeed, if there was one lesson to be learned from the Russian-Georgian war, it was that the conflicts in the Caucasus were not “frozen”. They were dynamic and dangerous processes that the West had willfully ignored, thereby contributing to allowing the tensions between Russia and Georgia to spiral out of control. The Russian-Georgian war having rocked the foundations of the European security structure, the lessons for Nagorno-Karabakh were clear: left to its own devices, the conflict was at great risk of re-erupting, an event that could pull in regional powers including Russia, Iran and Turkey. Substantial revamping of efforts to resolve that conflict was in order, but the West instead decided to push it even deeper into the “freezer”.

     In general terms, this failure  may have left the region in an even more precarious position than it was before its inception. Turkish and American policies have alienated Azerbaijan – damaging Western interests in that crucial country and in the broader Caspian region. The energy partnership between Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan – which formed the cornerstone of Western policies toward the region since the Clinton Administration’s times – is in tatters, as seen in the difficulties Baku and Ankara are experiencing in achieving a transit agreement for Azerbaijani gas sales to Europe. Turkey’s ties with Armenia have also been greatly damaged. It remains unclear if the bilateral relationship can muddle along, or whether it will revert to pre-2008 levels.

    Turkey’s relations with the U.S. and Russia have also suffered. With Washington, Ankara is frustrated with the Obama administration’s  refusal to seriously try to achieve progress on Nagorno-Karabakh, and especially with its failure to prevent the genocide resolution passing in the House Foreign Relations Committee. With Moscow, Ankara had hoped for support in resolving the Karabakh conundrum; but as senior Turkish officials have stated, Moscow instead grew unhelpful, seconding the American view that the two processes should not be linked. This in turn led Ankara to doubt whether Moscow really wanted either of the two processes to see progress. Finally, Armenia’s weakened leadership is now highly unlikely to make concessions on Karabakh in the near future.

    CONCLUSIONS: What lessons does the failure of the Turkish-Armenian normalization process hold for the future? Several are in order. First, the resilience of nationalist sentiment and traditional allegiances – such as that between Turkey and Azerbaijan –should not be underestimated. Second, Western and in particular American leaders cannot expect to ignore regional realities and strong-arm local leaders into compliance with their agendas without taking a long-term and serious interest in the deeper problems of the region.

    Third, the unresolved conflicts of the Caucasus have once more showed their powerful role as an impediment to progress and stability in the entire wider Black Sea region. For a decade and a half, the Western powers have sought to achieve policy goals in the region by willfully circumnavigating these conflicts, rather than seriously working to resolve them. Ironically, relatively limited progress toward a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict would likely have sufficed to allow the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process to go forward. Instead, that conflict was the key element that derailed the process.

    In the final analysis, the failure of the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process has helped reiterate one useful conclusion. Should Western leaders truthfully seek to stabilize the Wider Black Sea region, they should know the place to start: A serious and long-term engagement to resolve rather than to freeze the region’s conflicts.

    Svante E. Cornell is Research Director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center.

    © Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center, 2010. This article may be reprinted provided that the following sentence be included: “This article was first published in the Turkey Analyst (www.turkeyanalyst.org), a biweekly publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center”.