Turkish Forum

Category: Azerbaijan

  • Saakashvili pays tribute to the Armenian Genocide victims

    Saakashvili pays tribute to the Armenian Genocide victims
    25.06.2009 16:25

    Accompanied by Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian, Deputy Mayor of Yerevan Kamo Areyan and other officials, the President of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili visited the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex.

    The Georgian delegation paid a tribute of respect to the victims of the Armenian genocide and laid a wreath at the memorial.

    President Saakashvili watered the fir tree he had planted at the Memory Alley during his visit to Armenia a few years ago.

    ! Reproduction on full or in part is prohibited without reference to Public Radio of Armenia
  • Azerbaijan-INTERVIEW with Israeli President Shimon Peres

    Azerbaijan-INTERVIEW with Israeli President Shimon Peres

    Exclusive interview of European Desk of Trend News Agency with President of the State of Israel Shimon Peres

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    Question: You are scheduled to visit Azerbaijan next week. What documents will be signed during the visit? How do you estimate the present and how do you see the future of bilateral relations between Azerbaijan and Israel?

    Answer: Well, there are many things in common. First of all, Azerbaijan discovered the great wealth of gas and is head a cultural bust which is quite impressive. People don’t know it, but Azerbaijan gave a right to women to vote before the Swiss and before the Americans. Azerbaijan has shown patience and respect to the place where the Jews, the Muslims and the Christians can live together without hatred, without fanaticism. So, for me it is a special country that I know I can trust in and has cultural background. Oil you can buy, but culture you have to create. And Azerbaijan created culture.

    Azerbaijan is a small people. Azerbaijan and Israel have the same problem. How can small people become greater in spite of their size? You can become great irrespective of the size of your land if you adopt modern science and technology.

    President of Azerbaijan Mr. Ilham Aliev provokes the highest respect. I found him extremely humane, almost modest, educated, and sophisticated. It’s a pleasure to talk with him. He showed interest in these domains: agriculture, water, health, and high tech. We discussed it.

    Israel doesn’t almost have either land, or water, or gas, or petrol. So, we have to hang in our brains, in our science and we should share whatever we have, whatever Azerbaijan wants. The great thing about Israel is that we are not dangerous. We are too small to danger anybody. But on the other hand we are developed and we are ready to share with our friends whatever we can offer in the domain of development and science and so on. In that we can cooperate fully.

    We have the culture, we have the will and the readiness. I also met the father of the present president [of Azerbaijan]. I was impressed of him very much. I have met him twice. He was the man of tradition and intelligence.

    I also know that Azerbaijan has problem around. Basically, the problems stem from your neighbors. Because in politics you cannot choose your neighbors, as in the family you cannot choose your parents. It is a fact of life. Israel is totally for the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. We don’t think that one country can come and annex a part of another land.

    So, even before visiting the country (I have been there once) I have a great deal of sympathy. And also historically a profound thing for the way that Azerbaijan has handled the Jewish people. Many of them have emigrated to Israel. They carry with them very warm feeling to Azerbaijan. And they have a special flavor to your own society. So, I think that there is a collection of reasons that makes one very much interested in coming visit to your land.

    Q: Do you expect expansion of diplomatic ties between the two countries?
    A: I hope you will have a full embassy in Israel. It gets needed. I think more the cooperation goes up it is natural consequence of the relationship. It is going to happen, because I hope that we shall enrich our relations in this visit. There are many people coming from Israel with this matter, accompanying us in this visit. We want to establish better ties in the name of economy and in the name of science. And then the embassies will be very necessary on both sides.

    Q: You said that Israel supports territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. Israel has been taking constructive role in the regard to resolving the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Is Israel prepared to more active involvement in the process of settlement?

    A: We are a small country. We are not a weighty power. We can express our views and with our views we can contribute. But we are not a wealthy power, when it comes to our views, our attitudes and positions. I think else Azerbaijan would like very much to come closer not only with Israel, but with Jewish life abroad, and even in the United States of America. And we can do only what we can – to support the integrity of Azerbaijan in all domains.

    Q: Israel has recently expressed its intention to get Azerbaijani gas that runs from Azerbaijan to Turkey via Georgia. However, a pipeline that will go from Turkey to Israel through the Mediterranean Sea is needed in this respect. What volume of gas purchase is possible? And what who will undertake the expenses?

    A: The minister of infrastructure is coming with me. He handles that issue and I would prefer him to answer this question, because he knows more details of it. But the purpose of his coming is really to check the real possibilities of connecting and bringing the Azerbaijani gas to Israel.

    /Trend News/

    http://www.today.az/news/politics/53378.html

  • Nabucco, an American piece for a European orchestra

    Nabucco, an American piece for a European orchestra

    19:37 24/06/2009

    MOSCOW. (Alexander Knyazev, director of the regional branch of the Institute of the CIS, for RIA Novosti) – The European Union and Turkey plan to sign an intergovernmental agreement on the Nabucco natural gas pipeline project on June 25 in Ankara.

    Why such a romantic name?

    “Nabucco” is an opera by Giuseppe Verdi based on a biblical story about the plight of the Jews as they are assaulted and subsequently exiled from their homeland by the Babylonian King Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar). It is also an enchanting story of love and struggle for power.

    The latter element of the story is probably the only thing in common between the opera and the gas pipeline project initiated by U.S. President George W. Bush and based on some European and post-Soviet countries’ non-love of Russia, as well as the global battle for elbowing Russia out of the Eurasian gas market.

    Since Nabucco is mostly a political product, Turkey’s efforts to use its transit location to its best advantage are perfectly logical from the viewpoint of its national interests.

    Turkey will host a major portion of the 2,050-mile pipeline, which is to bring gas supplies from Central Asia and the Middle East to Europe without using Russian resources or territory.

    A consortium of six countries – Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Germany – was set up to build the pipeline to Central Europe via Turkey and the Balkans. The shareholders will finance one-third of expenditure, with the remaining part to be covered by international financial and credit organizations.

    The more than 3,300-km pipeline has been estimated at 7.9 billion euros ($10.7 billion) and will have an annual throughput capacity of 31 billion cubic meters. It is to be completed by 2013.

    However, technical calculations show that it cannot be commissioned sooner than in 2015; and that given the high and stable energy prices. The project is burdened with political risks and will run across a difficult geographical terrain.

    Europe, in truth, is encumbered by problems with energy delivery routes.

    A small Polish oil pipeline running from Odessa to Gdansk via Brody in Ukraine has long been incapacitated by Chevron’s inability to supply oil from the Tengiz deposit in Kazakhstan.

    Poland, which has been trying to break its dependence on Russian energy supplies, should now heave a sigh of relief, since supplies via Belarus are likely to shrink. The same goes for Lithuania whose oil refinery, Mazeikiu Nafta, that used Russian oil, has been idling since last year.

    If this is the energy freedom they wanted, then the two countries are paying an excessively high price for it. Europe’s efforts to solve its energy problems without Russia by importing energy resources from Central Asia are counterproductive – this is a fact. And the same is true of the Nabucco project.

    On the contrary, Russia’s South Stream project will have the guaranteed amount of natural gas, and its capacity can be subsequently increased. A recent agreement between Russia’s Gazprom and Italy’s Eni stipulates increasing it to 63 billion cubic meters annually. Besides, Nabucco is unlikely to be competitive compared to Gazprom’s project in terms of prices.

    The Russian gas export monopoly plans to pay for the South Stream construction and gas distribution and to sell gas to end users in Europe at attractive prices.

    Gas for Nabucco is expected to come from Turkmenistan and possibly Iran. However, Russia has an agreement with Turkmenistan under which it buys all of its export gas, and Russia and Iran may veto the construction of any pipeline along the bottom of the Caspian Sea.

    This means that Nabucco can receive gas only from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz deposit, but the probability of this is undermined by tensions between Turkey and Azerbaijan over the recent thaw in Turkish-Armenian relations.

    In other words, Nabucco will have no reliable sources of natural gas in the near future.

    A pipeline partnership is unimaginable without stability and reliability, something the U.S. administration cannot ensure even to its taxpayers. And so, what does the U.S. administration have to do with the Nabucco project?

    Unlike the most naive part of the European establishment, the East European and other “democratic” media describe Nabucco not as a European economic or energy project, but as an American political venture.

    The chaotic chanting in support of the Nabucco project reminds me of the “Va, pensiero” chorus of Hebrew slaves from Verdi’s opera – beautiful yet altogether gloomy and hopeless.

     

    The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

  • Armenia Still Hopeful About Deal With Turkey

    Armenia Still Hopeful About Deal With Turkey

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    22.06.2009
    Hovannes Shoghikian

    Armenia remains hopeful that it will normalize relations with Turkey soon despite renewed preconditions set by Turkish leaders, Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian said on Sunday.

    He also pointedly declined to deny that the Armenian government has accepted a Turkish proposal to set up a joint commission of historians that will look into the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. When asked by journalists to comment on statements to that effect made by U.S. and Turkish officials, Nalbandian said, “In order to develop [Turkish-Armenian] relations we intend to create a intergovernmental commission that will deal with numerous issues of interest to the two sides.”

    Testifying before a U.S. congressional subcommittee last week, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon said that the formation of a historical commission is part of a Turkish-Armenian “roadmap” agreement announced in late April.

    Turkish leaders have said in the past that the joint Turkish-Armenian study should specifically determine whether the Armenian massacres constituted a genocide. Former President Robert Kocharian dismissed the idea as a Turkish ploy designed to keep more countries from recognizing the genocide.

    But Kocharian’s successor, Serzh Sarkisian, indicated shortly after taking office last year that he does not object to the Turkish proposal in principle. In an April interview with “The Wall Street Journal,” Sarkisian effectively acknowledged that Yerevan agreed to the establishment of a “historical sub-commission” during its fence-mending negotiations with Ankara.

    Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other Turkish leaders have since made clear that this is not enough for completing the normalization process. They have said that Turkey will not establish diplomatic relations and reopen its border with Armenia before a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict acceptable to Azerbaijan.

    Like some U.S. officials, Nalbandian seemed to suggest that the Turkish statements do not preclude the implementation of the “roadmap” deal. “If there is a desire to solve issues by diplomatic means, then that can be done through negotiations, agreements reached as a result of those negotiations and the implementation of those agreements,” he told a joint news conference with Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the visiting foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates.

    “I think that we do have such an opportunity with regard to the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations,” added Nalbandian. “And Armenia will continue its efforts in that direction.”

    http://www.armenialiberty.org/content/article/1760172.html 

  • KARABAKH: CONTINUED LACK OF WESTERN INTEREST?

    KARABAKH: CONTINUED LACK OF WESTERN INTEREST?

    By Fariz Ismailzade (06/17/2009 issue of the CACI Analyst)

    The initial hopes that the change of administration in the U.S. would bring new momentum to the deadlocked Nagorno-Karabakh peace process are starting to fade. Although President Obama during the first months of his term in office pushed actively for the normalization of Turkish-Armenian and Azerbaijani-Armenian relations, not much has come out of this process. It is likely now that President Obama, just like his predecessor President Bush, will turn his attention to more global problems, like North Korea and Iraq, and thus forget the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict for the rest of his term.

    BACKGROUND: When President Bush was elected, he was searching an opportunity for a foreign policy success. Officials at the State Department presented him with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as one of the world’s ripest for a breakthrough. Urgent high level talks between the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia were arranged by U.S. officials in Key West in 2001 and a great push was made to convince both leaders to come to an agreement. Many analysts believe that the Key West talks were the closest the parties have ever come to a peace agreement in the past decade. Yet, both presidents felt hostage to their nationalistic home crowds and were unable to make compromises. Particularly, then Armenian President Robert Kocharian, fearing the fate of his predecessor Levon Ter Petrosian, shied away from committing to a step-by-step solution of the conflict, in which Armenia would first return the occupied Azerbaijani territories and only after that the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh would be determined.

    The failed Key West talks, in which the US government invested heavily, including the personal involvement of then Secretary of State Colin Powell, led to a grave disappointment among the mediators. The conflict was put on the backburner for the rest of President Bush’s term in office. The September 11 terror attacks and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq completely changed the foreign policy priorities of the U.S. and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was certainly not on the top list of urgent tasks for the State Department. Yet, much of the blame for the failure in the Key West talks can actually be placed on the US officials themselves. They rushed for a breakthrough without a proper understanding of the conflict’s realities, without proper involvement of Russia, Armenia’s key military ally, and without much change in the balance of power on the ground.

    Without proper preparations, it would be very naïve to expect a breakthrough in the conflict.

    A similar picture now arises with President Obama. Right after his election, he started pushing for the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations. His agenda was clear: make a breakthrough in bilateral Turkish-Armenian relations and use this as an excuse not to use the “G” word when referring to the events of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire. It was clear that President Obama did not want to use the “G” word and thus ruin the important relations with strategic ally Turkey. But simultaneously he needed to either keep his campaign promise or get out of the situation with a very solid excuse. Therefore, a very heavy diplomatic push started mounting on Turkey to open its border with Armenia.

    Many analysts believed that by opening the border, Turkey could engage Armenia more and thus reduce the latter’s dependence on Russia. Others saw little practical change in the situation on the ground as Armenia’s economy, military and security is practically in the hands of Russia. Thus, a one-sided opening of the border would only damage Turkish-Azerbaijani relations and cause a rift between the two strategic U.S. partners in the region. As a result, the balance of power in the region would shift and the fate of the Nabucco gas pipeline and other mega-projects would be put at risk. After April 24, when both President Obama and the Turkish government managed to avoid the potential disaster in U.S.-Turkish relations, things have calmed down. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan traveled to Baku and assured his Azerbaijani friends that Turkey would never open the border before the occupied Azerbaijani lands are liberated. There also seems to be substantial progress in Turkish-Azerbaijan talks on the issue of transiting Azerbaijani gas to the European markets through Turkey. Thus, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is once again on its way down on the U.S. agenda for the region.

    IMPLICATIONS: It is likely that President Obama, after his initial excitement over the potential normalization of Turkish-Armenian and Azerbaijani-Armenian relations, is going to pay less and less attention to this part of the world. In that respect, he will repeat President Bush’s path. Initial diplomatic activity during both presidential terms would produce many hopes, but no concrete results. Thus, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict would again be put on the shelf.

    There are some clear signs of this trend already. In the latest peace talks in Prague, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian made no breakthrough on the terms of an agreement, despite high expectations and hopes. On the contrary, the Azerbaijani side came out of the meeting in a very frustrated mood, saying that Armenia makes no changes in its stubborn and unconstructive approach to the solution of the conflict. The hopeful remarks by U.S. mediator Matt Bryza also irritated official Baku, which accused Mr. Bryza of distorting the information and purposefully sending optimistic news to the State Department leadership whereas the real situation on the ground remained stagnant.

    There are fears that the upcoming meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian Presidents in St. Petersburg will put a final end to all hopes for the peaceful resolution of the conflict in the nearest future. No major breakthrough is expected during this meeting and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is likely to enter another 4 years of boredom and stagnation. The U.S. administration has to shift its focus to the North Korean peninsula, and its relations with Russia, Iran and Iraq.

    CONCLUSIONS: It has become a recurring pattern that after a change in the U.S. government, the new President rushes to score a foreign policy success by pushing for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. This is usually done without much change on the ground and without a proper understanding of the conflict. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is very much an international conflict. Russia’s role in it is huge and the U.S. administration will never be able to resolve it without properly addressing the role of Russia and without taking into consideration the factor of Armenia’s dependence on Russia.

    Pushing for an immediate breakthrough and desperately wishing to see immediate successes lead to quick disappointments, after which the US administration forgets about the conflict and hesitates to organize another high level push for its solution. It would be better if the U.S. administration would not push for quick resolution of the conflict, for which the parties are not ready, but instead maintained a high level interest in the conflict throughout the whole presidential term and gradually prepared the ground work for a final resolution. This conflict can only be resolved through preparing a solid ground work and shifting the balance of power in the region. Investing all hopes in the initial months of negotiation will inevitably produce disappointment in the end. 

    AUTHOR’S BIO: Fariz Ismailzade is a political analyst based in Baku, Azerbaijan.

    http://www.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/5130

  • INTERVIEW-Turkey talks on Armenia “paused” – EU mediator

    INTERVIEW-Turkey talks on Armenia “paused” – EU mediator

    * Envoy does not see new Turkey policy on Armenia changing
    * Pause should not last so long as to lose momentum-envoy

    By Michael Stott

    MOSCOW, June 17 (Reuters) – Turkey has taken a “tactical step backwards” on normalising relations with Armenia because of hostile domestic reaction to the move, the EU’s envoy to the region said in an interview.

    “A step back was taken by the Turkish side … but this is not a U-turn,” said EU South Caucasus envoy Peter Semneby. “We expect the conversations will continue.”

    After decades of hostility, Muslim Turkey and Christian Armenia announced in April a “roadmap” for re-establishing diplomatic relations and opening their shared border.

    But Ankara’s Muslim ally Azerbaijan said Armenia should first leave Nagorno-Karabakh, a mostly ethnic Armenian enclave which broke away after fighting a bloody war with Azerbaijan in the 1990s and claims independence.

    Turkey then offered support for the Azeri position, complicating further progress in talks with Armenia.

    Semneby said in the interview, conducted at the end of a visit to Moscow last week, that it was important the “pause” in the peace process between Turkey and Armenia did not last too long because of the risk that impetus would be lost.

    “The normalisation (with Armenia) became the subject of quite widespread and heated discussion in Turkey,” he added in earlier remarks to a small group of reporters. “It seems to me, this discussion became more heated than was expected.” Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan promised Azerbaijan during a visit to Baku last month that Ankara would not open its border with Armenia — closed since 1993 — until Armenia ended what he termed its occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh.

    “I see this as a Turkish tactical step backwards,” Semneby told Reuters. “But fundamentally, the new foreign policy that has been pursued by the Erdogan government, I don’t see that this policy is changing.”

    PROGRESS

    Talks on the future of Nagorno-Karabakh have been dragging on for more than a decade under the auspices of the Minsk Group linking Russia, France and the United States.

    But Armenia, whose president, Serzh Sarksyan, is from Nagorno-Karabakh, is reluctant to budge and Azerbaijan periodically threatens military intervention.

    Nonetheless Semneby believes real progress is being made.

    “It is clear that if you look at the negotiating process, it is intensifying,” he told Reuters. “We had in a month two meetings and there will be another relatively soon between the presidents.”

    The Nagorno-Karabakh war, in which up to 30,000 died, was the bloodiest of a spate of conflicts which followed the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Armed clashes still occur regularly along the lines separating Azeri and Armenian troops.

    Asked about the risk of conflict, Semneby said it would be foolish to neglect it but he felt both sides understood the enormous costs which would be involved in any large-scale military engagement.

    “Even with this very dangerous posturing that we see sometimes and the fact that the forces are not separated and there are incidents all the time, the two sides are by now used to managing incidents,” he said.

    “If anything, the Georgia war (last year with Russia), demonstrated the risks of military engagement … it was also a wake-up call to both countries how vulnerable they are.” (Editing by Alison Williams)

    Source:  www.reuters.com, Jun 17, 2009