Turkish Forum

Category: Eastern Europe

  • CAUCASUS UPDATE, November 10, 2008

    CAUCASUS UPDATE, November 10, 2008

    Note from the Editor-in-Chief, Nasimi Aghayev 

    The election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States last week was welcomed around the world as an end to the unpopular Bush presidency and the chance to rebuild America ’s standing in the world. Expectations are, of course, going to be disappointed, both domestically and internationally. For all the significance of a US president with a Kenyan heritage and a Muslim middle name, President Obama will still have to face tough and unpopular decisions in the world. 

    On November 5, the day after election day, Moscow announced that it would deploy a number of short-range missiles in Kaliningrad , the Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland , as a means to ‘neutralise – if necessary – the planned US missile defence system in eastern Europe. The decision was announced by President Dimitri Medvedev in his first state of the nation address, and was a clear warning that the Kremlin will not be appeased by a mere change of occupant in the White House. 

    Is it viable to expect a significant shift in policy towards Russia and the Caucasus once Obama is inaugurated? It is unlikely. Much has been made of John McCain’s hard-line policy approach to dealing with Moscow , and Obama’s relative inexperience in the area, and it is true that domestic opinion in the region tended to favour McCain, especially in states nervous about Russian adventurism such as Georgia and Ukraine . But in reality the room for maneuver will not allow a radical departure from the Bush administration, for both a general reason and a number of specific ones. The exception might seem to be Nagorno-Karabakh. 

    The general reason is that, for all the talk after the Georgian war of a new (albeit ‘19th-century’) geopolitical order in Eurasia, the relationship with Russia is not the incoming administration’s top priority. The economy is a far more pressing concern. And even within the sphere of foreign affairs, negotiations with European and Chinese leaders on the world financial crisis will take up a lot more time than Russia and the Caucasus . Much will of course depend on President Obama’s personnel selection, in particular the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, but for a while at least we are likely to see policy towards Eurasia as a secondary concern. 

    The specific reasons vary, but boil down to the fact that there is only so much that the US can do without breaking its prior commitments or undertaking a major volte-face on its whole foreign policy front which Mr Obama has neither the experience nor the desire (despite his commitment to multilateralism) to countenance. Firstly, the missile defence shield. By November 7, Mr. Obama had spoken to Lech Kaczynski, the Polish President, affirming his commitment to the project, which includes interceptor missiles based in Poland . A telephone call whilst President-elect, of course, does not equate to a policy whilst President. But it is nonetheless difficult to imagine Mr. Obama withdrawing from the missile shield project during his tenure, although it may be modified to make it less unpalatable to the Kremlin. 

    Secondly, Georgia . Mr Obama criticized Russia ’s invasion of the country in August and called Russia ’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia “deeply troubling”. He has warned Moscow that a failure to abide by the ceasefire will lead to difficulties in its attempts to gain membership to the World Trade Organisation, as well as dialogue frameworks such as the NATO-Russia Council. So far, so orthodox. He has expressed support for Georgia and Ukraine in their NATO aspirations, and declared in September that Tbilisi was ready for a Membership Action Plan, although it will be interesting to see how far he is willing to push it. He may be less willing to antagonize European leaders by insisting on this explosive issue than President Bush (or indeed Mr. McCain), especially if he has been cooperating closely with them over the financial crisis. 

    Thirdly, Nagorno-Karabakh. The clearest sign of a presumed change here could be Mr. Obama’s relationship with the huge Armenian diaspora in the United States : during his election campaign he welcomed their support and promised to find a resolution to the Karabakh conflict that is based upon “principles of democracy and self determination”. He has also expressed strong support for formally recognizing the so-called “Armenian genocide” of 1915, a notoriously controversial issue, and has stated that he will seek an end to the Turkish and Azerbaijani blockades of Armenia (imposed on Armenia by the latter after the Armenian forces occupied the territories of Azerbaijan in 1992-1993). Vice President-elect Joe Biden is also known for his strong support of Yerevan . However,it is now to be watched how far Obama as a president will be able to go to keep his promises in this regard. 

    On the ground, Turkey ’s recent moves to thaw relations with Armenia will be looked on favorably by the Obama White House, which must try and keep the momentum going. However, if Obama’s administration chooses to lean on Armenia , it could prove detrimental to the détente process currently taking place in the Caucasus ( Turkey has already warned Obama of breaking off the  rapprochement process with Armenia in case if the US recognizes the “Armenian genocide”) and grant Russia a perfect opportunity to gather disaffected players to itself. In particular, in case of obvious US support for Armenia, Baku could find the warm relationship it has fostered with the Bush Administration cooling somewhat and find that its interests are better served by Moscow. Russia has already started taking important steps in that direction making use of the “lame-duck situation” in Washington . By holding a trilateral meeting of presidents of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan last week in Moscow as a result of which a declaration on the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process (first time since the cease-fire agreement of 1994) was signed by the presidents, Russia, frequently accused of wishing the continuation of frozen conflicts in the region, has intended to send a signal of its “good will” in the Caucasus, thus aiming on the one hand to rectify its damaged image after its invasion of Georgia, and on the other hand to have an upper hand in case of an ultimate settlement of the conflict. It is noteworthy that the only international mediator in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict – the OSCE Minsk Group (including beyond Russia , US and France as well), paralyzed after the Georgia war, was totally excluded from the above-mentioned meeting. Russia ’s attempts to pose itself as a mediator being capable to produce “tangible results” (e.g. the above-said declaration) cannot but cause great suspicions and concerns in Washington . 

    If Moscow exploits the opportunity further and begins to push for a resolution which emphasizes territorial integrity above all others (as unlikely as this may be), and if President Obama keeps his above-mentioned promises, we could begin to see a serious alteration of the Baku-Washington relationship which could potentially introduce significant changes to the present geopolitical order in the region. So if the new administration wants to avoid heightened tensions, it must try to balance regional interests and avoid alienating key players as the Bush Administration has repeatedly done. President Obama must attempt to find a solution to the problem that satisfies Turkey , accommodates Azerbaijan and Armenia , and circumscribes Russia . 

    We should not expect a new era under Obama. The Russian bear is not about to abandon its suspicion of the American eagle just because of a new face, and the feeling is mutual. The Georgian conflict was a significant rupture in relations and has created a potential for the emergence of a new geopolitical situation in the region. Despite his pre-electoral calls for a Russia policy based on “cooperation instead of confrontation”, Obama will have to continue the US support for the pro-American government in Tbilisi , no matter how much Saakashvili might have bothered him. It is obvious that if Georgia is gone, it will not last much till the region will be gone as well. 

    In the Caucasus , as elsewhere, it looks as if President Obama will have to start lowering expectations.

     

    www.cria-online.org

  • Mountain megalomaniacs

    Mountain megalomaniacs

    Norman Stone

    Published 06 November 2008

    Between Russia and the Middle East, the Caucasus is one of the world’s most diverse regions – and as recent fighting in South Ossetia and Abkhazia showed, still boiling with ethnic tensions. Norman Stone reviews a history which makes sense of this complexity

    The surrender of the Circassian leader Sheikh Shamil to the tsarist forces in 1859

    The Ghost of Freedom: a History of the Caucasus

    Charles King

    OUP, 219pp, £17.99

    A Georgian professor came to my (Turkish) university a few years ago and said: “People who live in mountains are stupid.” You probably hear such things often enough in the Caucasus, but it is not the sort of remark that you expect professors to pass. However, there is maybe something in it, a point made by the crazy loyalism of the Jacobite Highlanders of the Forty-Five, or for that matter of the Navarrese Carlists: brave and romantic, certainly, with their own codes of honour, but not very bright.

    A French sociologist, André Siegfried, developed this theme a century ago, because he had noticed that voting patterns depended on altitude; in the valleys, people got on with normal lives, but, the further up you went, the less this was true. The diet was very poor, the economy was sheep-stealing or smuggling, resentment simmered against the valley settlers, and religion of a wild sort reigned. The Caucasus also fits Siegfried’s pattern, with the difference that, the further uphill you went, the more weird languages you hit on. In Charles King’s words, “the north-east harbours the Nakh languages . . . as well as a mixed bag of disparate languages that includes Avar, Dargin and Lezgin”.

    He has missed out the Tats, who are mountain Jews, and he has mercifully missed out a great deal else, because the whole region is a kaleidoscope, and the ancient history is very complicated, with an Iberia and an Albania in shadowy existence; the Ossetians, of whom the world recently heard so much, are apparently what is left of the Alans, one of the barbarian tribes that swept through the later Roman Empire (and ended up in North Africa).

    Charles King’s great virtue is that he is a very proficient simplifier and misser-out; he writes well, and can read the languages that matter (for some reason, quite a number of the important sources are in German; Germans were especially interested in the Caucasus, and in 1918 even had plans to shift U-boats overland to the Caspian). All the important themes are here, with some interesting additions.

    King concentrates on the modern history of the Caucasus, roughly from 1700, when Russia began to take over the overlordship from Persia and the Ottoman Empire. In 1801, she annexed much of Georgia. This was relatively easy, since it is a very divided country (and the language – so difficult that even Robert Conquest, writing his biography of Stalin, found it impossible – itself sub-divides). It was also Christian, the nobility on the whole glad to come to terms with the tsar, and it could easily be reached from the sea, whereas other parts of the Caucasus, given the very mountainous and forested terrain, were much more difficult. The various Muslim natives of the northern Caucasus were then generally known as “Circassians” (the present-day Chechens are related) and they put up an extraordinary resistance to Russian penetration.

    Cossacks came in, as the 19th century went ahead, and a line of forts was established; but a ferocious tribal-religious resistance grew up, under a legendary figure, Sheikh Shamil. Combining mystical-religious inspiration with an extraordinary astuteness as to guerrilla tactics, Shamil kept the Russians pinned down for a whole generation. (King’s bibliography is very solid and useful, but he might have mentioned a classic book about this, Sabres of Paradise, by Lesley Blanch, who went on to write The Wilder Shores of Love about the erotic Orient.)

    In the event, the Russians “solved” the problem of the Circassians by mass-deportation. About 1,250,000 of them were forced out, and King is very good at describing their fate, as a third of the deportees died of disease or starvation or massacre, and the rest scattered over the Near and Middle East. Settling in eastern Anatolia, they encountered the Armenians, and bitter conflict resulted. A generation later much the same fate occurred to the Armenians of eastern Turkey. King quite rightly makes the parallel.

    Shamil was at long last captured, but the Russians treated him well, and part of his family faded into the tsarist aristocracy. This is incidentally a dimension of matters that King could have explored: the relations of Russia and Islam. He has a good chapter about the image of the Caucasus in Russian literature (Lermontov and Tolstoy especially) but both Pushkin and Dostoyevsky were fascinated by Islam, and the Russians, whether tsarist or communist (and even nowadays) were quite adept at dealing with Muslims. The Tatars have turned into rather a plus: Nureyev and Baryshnikov, whose names mean “light” and “peace” in Turkish, being a case in point.

    In fact, as the 19th century went ahead, the Caucasus was opened up, and many of the Muslims became loyal subjects of the tsar. Tiflis, the Georgian capital (why must we use these wretched “Tbilisis” and “Vilniuses” for places so well marked on the historic map?), was the seat of a viceroyalty that stretched from Kars in eastern Anatolia to the Caspian, and the railways, or the military roads, snaked ahead. Oil was struck on the Caspian side, and Baku, the capital of today’s Azerbaijan, grew up as a boom town, much of the architecture rather distinguished in late- Victorian style. One of the great mansions has been spectacularly restored as a historical museum.

    To this day, the solid architecture of Kars, now in eastern Turkey, is impressive, and though the town went through a very bad period, when the Cold War was going on, it is doing much better now, as the oil pipeline to Baku pumps away, and the old railway links are restored. Even now, despite the gruesome climate, the inhabitants of Kars are notably sharper and better-educated than those of Trabzon or Erzurum, which remained under Ottoman rule. According to Orhan Pamuk’s novel on the town, Snow, its theatre was very good, but if you needed Islamic female costumes you had to send off to Erzurum, which was (and is: the calls to prayer are frequent and deafening) very provincial-pious. In its way, Kars shows in miniature that pre-1914 period which is the great might-have-been of Russian history: 1914 aborted a period of growing prosperity even, if you like, a bourgeois revolution. The revolution of 1917 finished all of that.

    There was a pathetic episode, as the three nations of Transcaucasia – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia – established a shadowy independence, even though the peoples of each were (and to some extent still are) intermingled. Baku and Tiflis had large Armenian populations, and Yerevan, the territory of today’s Armenia, was roughly half Muslim, whether Azeri or Kurdish. “Ethnic cleansing” then went ahead, the Armenians especially becoming megalomaniac, and even, as a first act on independence at Christmas 1918, invading Georgia. To this day, much of the Armenian diaspora seems never to have forgiven the west for failing to support their cause: hence these strange and persistent demands for the tragedy to be recognised as genocide. Perhaps it was, but as King shows, Armenians were not the only victims – not by any means – and it is rather to the credit of the Circassians’ (and others’) descendants that they are not demanding similar recognition of genocide from Congress or the Assemblée Nationale or Cardiff City Council or the Edinburgh City Fathers etc.

    Sovietisation of the Caucasus then happened, and it was the communists’ turn to find out just how difficult the national question was going to be: eventually, it destroyed them. Communism had a very strong appeal to begin with when it came to the national question: who, looking at the Caucasus (as with Yugoslavia) would not be desperate for anything that would stop the rise of vicious tinpot nationalism? Many stout communists, beginning with Stalin himself, came from the Caucasus, and Stalin in the end had recourse to deportation (of the Chechens and many, many other peoples) as the only solution. That created the counter-hatreds that have made post-Soviet life so difficult. The Armenians repeated their fantasy of 1918 and invaded a neighbour – Azerbaijan – in pursuit of a fantasy. They victoriously set their standards afluttering over Karabakh, with much swelling of diaspora bosoms. The effort, and the isolation it brought them, caused nothing but economic trouble to what was already a poor, land-locked little place, and the original population, three million, is now, from emigration, below two: independence, in other words, having done more damage than ever the Turks did. The Georgians had an 18th-century ruler who described himself as “The Most High King, by the Will of Our Lord King of Kings of the Abkhaz, Kartvelians, Kakhetians and Armenians and Master of All the East and the West”: more megalomania with a contemporary ring, in other words. Charles King has written a very instructive and interesting book about it all.

    Norman Stone’s most recent book is “World War One: a Short History”, now available as a Penguin paperback (£7.99)

    Source: www.newstatesman.com, 06 November 2008

  • Mediators Look To ‘Finalize’ Framework Karabakh Deal

    Mediators Look To ‘Finalize’ Framework Karabakh Deal

     

     

     

     

     

    By Emil Danielyan

    International mediators plan to visit Baku and Yerevan next week to try to build on progress which they believe was made by the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents at their weekend meeting in Russia, Washington’s chief Nagorno-Karabakh negotiator said late Thursday.

    In an interview with RFE/RL, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza also insisted that the outgoing U.S. administration still hopes to broker a framework peace accord on Karabakh before handing over the reigns of power to President-elect Barack Obama on January 20.

    “It’s absolutely possible,” he said, commenting on chances for the signing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani agreement in the coming weeks. “I’m not predicting that it will happen. I’m just saying it is possible and I want to do everything I can to make it a reality.”

    Bryza spoke to RFE/RL by phone from Vienna where he met earlier on Thursday with the two other co-chairs of the OSCE’s Minsk Group representing France and Russia. The mediators discussed their further steps four days after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev hosted talks outside Moscow with his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts. In a joint statement, they said those talks gave them “reason for cautious optimism.”

    “We will make a trip to the region, I hope some time next week, and consult with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to figure out how to translate the momentum, that we felt in Moscow and that our French colleagues felt in Paris when President Sarkisian visited [on Tuesday,] into a finalization of the basic principles [of a Karabakh settlement,]” Bryza said.

    He said the co-chairs will then meet the foreign ministers of the two countries on the sidelines of a high-level OSCE meeting in Helsinki due early next month. “Depending on how much progress we will make, we will see whether we can get the presidents to meet again soon,” he added.

    In a joint declaration with Medvedev, Presidents Serzh Sarkisian and Ilham Aliev pledged to intensify the protracted search for peace but stopped short of announcing any concrete agreements. The lack of specifics in the declaration is construed by some observers as a sign that a breakthrough in the Karabakh peace process is not on the cards.

    Bryza insisted, however, that the Moscow summit did bring Aliev and Sarkisian closer to agreement. “First of all, they developed a better sense of trust in each other and respect for each other’s needs, for what they need to do to sell the agreement back home,” he said. “Number two, in terms of substance, it sounds like they began a process of narrowing their differences on the remaining few issues that have to be resolved over the basic principles. So both in terms of mood and substance, they moved forward.”

    Former President Levon Ter-Petrosian, the leader of Armenia’s main opposition alliance, went further on Tuesday, saying that Aliev and Sarkisian have “officially” accepted the basic principles of a Karabakh settlement which the mediators presented to the conflicting parties in Madrid in November 2007. Ter-Petrosian predicted that the two presidents will likely seal a peace deal in the United States as early as next month.

    “Actually, it’s a great idea, a great aspiration,” commented Bryza. “I hope we could get to that. But we don’t have any concrete plans like that yet.

    “It’s an ambitious goal that the former President Ter-Petrosian has set. I’d like to work toward it but it may be a little more ambitious than reality would allow right now.”

    Bryza indicated that the parties have yet to fully agree on some of they provisions of the proposed framework agreement, notably a future referendum on Karabakh’s status. He said they are still trying to reconcile the internationally principles of territorial integrity and self-determination. “It’s not agreed on yet but it’s under discussion,” he said. “And I sense that the two sides, especially the presidents, are talking things through and thinking things through with regard to that issue and others.”

    The Minsk Group’s existing peace proposals seem to entitle Karabakh’s predominantly Armenian population to determining the disputed territory’s status in a future referendum. However, Aliev has repeatedly stated, most recently on October 24, that Azerbaijan will never come to terms with the loss of Karabakh. The Armenian side, on the other hand, maintains that Azerbaijani recognition of the Karabakh Armenians’ “right to self-determination” is a must.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov singled out late last month the future of the so-called Lachin corridor, which provides for the shortest overland link between Karabakh and Armenia proper, as the main stumbling block in the negotiating process. He did not elaborate, though.

    “Everybody knows that that issue has to be resolved,” Bryza said, referring to Lachin. “It’s an important one. We’re working on that and getting closer to that.”

    The U.S. official further reiterated that Washington has no problem with Moscow seemingly taking the initiative in the Karabakh peace process of late and does not fear being sidelined by the Russians. He argued that he and the Minsk Group’s French co-chair, Bernard Fassier, were invited to the November 2 summit held at Meiendorf Castle outside Moscow.

    “We don’t consider it so much a Russian initiative because we were invited from the beginning to come to Moscow,” he said. “If the Russian president decides he wants to apply his influence and his energy to moving the process forward, that’s positive.”

    The U.S. and Russia are willing to continue to work together on Karabakh despite their “very sharp differences” over the recent conflict in Georgia, concluded Bryza.

    https://www.azatutyun.am/a/1598233.html

  • Energy at Root of Karabakh Accord

    Energy at Root of Karabakh Accord

    By Nikolaus von Twickel / Staff Writer

    The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan have signed a declaration on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict at a meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev in a sign of the Kremlin’s growing role and the importance of energy politics in the South Caucasus.

    Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Azeri President Ilham Aliyev signed the largely symbolic document at Medvedev’s Maiendorf residence, just outside Moscow on Saturday.

    Armenia has traditionally been a staunch ally of Russia, while energy-rich Azerbaijan has maintained friendly ties with Georgia, but Moscow has been looking for greater cooperation with Azerbaijan on energy issues.

    The five-point document, published on the Kremlin’s web site, says both countries will step up efforts to find a peaceful solution over Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan that broke away after a bloody conflict in the early 1990s that killed more than 30,000 and displaced more than 1 million.

    The declaration is the first such document signed by the heads of the two states since Russia mediated a cease-fire agreement in 1994.

    While it stresses the need for a political settlement based on international law, the document does not contain any significant commitments, such as to forego the use of force, nor does it mention the conflicting issues at the heart of the conflict, territorial integrity and national self-determination.

    The outcome of the meeting was not as significant as some may have hoped.

    “This was not much different than dozens of meetings before,” Svante Cornell, research director at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, a joint U.S.-Swedish think tank, said Tuesday by telephone from Tbilisi, Georgia. “All we have seen is basically two leaders committing themselves to solving the conflict.”

    Alexei Malashenko, an analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center, said the declaration was largely ceremonial.

    “The fact that Medvedev [presided over the talks) just means that both sides accept Russia as mediator,” Malashenko said Tuesday. “Russia needed an urgent rehabilitation as peacekeeper in the region.”

    Moscow’s relations with the West worsened dramatically after it sent soldiers and tanks deep into Georgia to repel a Georgian military attack to reclaim its breakaway region of South Ossetia in August.

    The declaration also says negotiations should continue within the framework of the so-called Minsk Group, a 12-member body headed jointly by Russia, France and the United States, and overseen by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

    U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza and French Ambassador Bernard Fassier were at Maiendorf, an OSCE spokesman said by telephone from Vienna.

    Bryza, the senior U.S. diplomat overseeing the South Caucasus region, praised the result.

    “My country fully supports this document. The declaration shows that both presidents can work seriously towards solving this conflict,” he said, Interfax reported Monday.

    Cornell said the declaration was a show of force by the Kremlin capitalizing on the weakness of the West, as the Georgian war in August, the global financial crisis and the leadership change in the United States would all work to cripple Western influence in the region.

    “There is a new geopolitical situation now,” he said.

    Russia, he said, was offering a solution that would mean a loss of independence for Azerbaijan, possibly through the deployment of a Moscow-sponsored peacekeeping force on its territory.

    Cornell said Moscow was probably eyeing a “common state” solution, something that had been on the negotiating table back in the 1990s.

    This proposal, which had been rejected by Baku, focuses on bringing Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh together in a confederation.

    Carnegie’s Malashenko said that while its influence in the region has grown, Russia would not go it alone.

    “To solve this conflict, you need more than one mediator; you need a group of mediators,” he said. “Moscow won’t act outside the format of the Minsk Group.”

    Malashenko also denied that the talks might herald a weakening of Moscow’s traditional support for Armenia.

    “I cannot imagine that one country will give one-sided support to one party, because this is impossible,” he said.

    Both Azerbaijan and Armenia depend on trade routes through Georgia.

    Moscow has recently been courting Azerbaijan, which wants to sell more gas to Russia.

    Medvedev signed a cooperation agreement with Aliyev in Baku in July, and in Moscow this September both leaders discussed direct talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh.

    Europe has also been making overtures to Azerbaijan as a vital supplier to a proposed new gas pipeline, which would reduce Western dependence on Russian energy.

    The Nabucco pipeline project has been backed both by the European Union and the United States.

    EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs will travel to Turkey and Azerbaijan this Wednesday to show Europe’s commitment to the project, The Associated Press reported.

    Moscow has worried the EU by negotiating with Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to commit to sending their Caspian Sea gas through Russia.

    It is also pushing South Stream, a rival pipeline project by state-controlled Gazprom, which is slated to cost some $13 billion.

  • LECTURE- Turkish-Russian Relationship & Its Importance for Eurasia, Istanbul, 11/06

    LECTURE- Turkish-Russian Relationship & Its Importance for Eurasia, Istanbul, 11/06

    As the first lecture of its Lecture Series on Eurasia,
    Maltepe University presents:

    “Turkish-Russian Relationship and Its Importance for Eurasia”

    By Professor Norman Stone (Department of International Relations,
    Bilkent University, Turkey).

    Time: Thursday, November 6, 2008, 2:00 PM
    Venue: Marma Congress Center, Maltepe University, Maltepe, Istanbul

    Norman Stone is a professor of Modern History and an expert on the
    history of the Central and Eastern Europe as well as the
    Turkish-Russian relations. He has served at Cambridge and Oxford
    Universities    , and now lectures at Bilkent University. Some of his
    books are “The Eastern Front 1914-1917″, “Europe Transformed
    1878-1919” and “Czechoslovakia: Crossroads and Crises, 1918-88″. He
    is also a co-author of “The Other Russia” with Michael Glenny.

    For further details:

    Dr. Güljanat Kurmangaliyeva Ercilasun
    Maltepe University
    Faculty of Fine Arts
    [email protected]
    +90 (216) 626 10 50 ext. 1841
    www.maltepe.edu.tr

  • MOSCOW SUMMIT ON KARABAKH FALLS SHORT OF KREMLIN’S GOALS

    MOSCOW SUMMIT ON KARABAKH FALLS SHORT OF KREMLIN’S GOALS

    By Vladimir Socor

    Tuesday, November 4, 2008

     

    Presidents Dmitry Medvedev of Russia, Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, and Serge Sarkisian of Armenia met on November 2 near Moscow to discuss the current state of negotiations on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. With those negotiations moving slowly forward at several levels and on their own momentum, Medvedev initiated this summit hoping to lift Russia into the driver’s seat of the process.

    The Kremlin hoped to capitalize on the political effects of its recent invasion of Georgia and seizure of that country’s territories through military occupation and diplomatic “recognition.” The Georgia crisis served to demonstrate that Russia can and does act decisively, brutally, and with impunity in the South Caucasus, while the United States was drifting toward strategic disengagement and the European Union failed to fill the vacuum. The moment seemed ripe for Russia to display “regional leadership” by taking the initiative in negotiations to settle the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

    Moscow also hoped to display a capacity for conflict resolution through diplomacy, not just through force. One major goal of this exercise in diplomacy, however, is to deploy Russian troops in this conflict theater as “peacekeepers” or “guarantors” at some stage of the settlement.

    The summit’s only apparent result, however, was a joint declaration that fell clearly short of Moscow’s goals (www.kremlin.ru, Arminfo, www.day.az, November 3, 4). The Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents first held a two-hour, face-to-face session and were then joined by Medvedev for finalizing the declaration. Signed by the three presidents in front of TV cameras, then read out to the media by Medvedev, the five-point declaration does not commit the signatory parties to any specific approaches or actions within the continuing negotiating process. If the Kremlin wished to show “forward movement” after hosting this summit, its hopes were in vain.

    The declaration’s preamble underscores the continuity of direct dialogue between the two countries with the mediation of the three OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs (Russia, the United States, and France).

    Point 1 envisages a “political settlement of the conflict based on the principles and norms of international law.” This, however, neither resolves nor circumvents the dilemma between territorial integrity of states and the inviolability of internationally recognized borders on one hand and national self-determination on the other hand. This dilemma has been created and maintained artificially on the Armenian side as a means to freeze the post-1994 situation, with Azerbaijani territories occupied and the Azeri population forced out.

    Point 2 reaffirms support for the ongoing and future mediation by the OSCE Minsk Group’s co-chairs, “taking into consideration their meeting with the parties on November 29, 2007.” The reference is to the three co-chairs’ joint proposals presented during the OSCE’s 2007 year-end ministerial conference in Madrid. The Armenian side interprets that document as elevating the national self-determination principle to the same level as territorial integrity and inviolability of borders. Yerevan therefore prefers to cite “the Madrid principles” as a point of departure for further negotiations. Azerbaijan, however, argues for the primacy of the territorial integrity principle in OSCE and other international documents of normative character. The Moscow declaration downgrades the significance of Madrid to a mere “meeting,” not principles and not even a document for further reference. This undoubtedly comes as a disappointment for Yerevan.

    Point 3 stipulates that the “peaceful resolution should be accompanied by legally binding international guarantees in all aspects and stages of settlement.” Russia and Armenia insist on such guarantees: Yerevan refers to the security of the Armenian population of Upper Karabakh while Moscow needs an excuse for deploying Russian “peacekeeping” or “guarantor” troops. For its part, Azerbaijan does not oppose international guarantees but does insist that any such guarantees be in line with Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.

    Point 4 records Azerbaijan’s and Armenia’s intention to continue their efforts for a political settlement of the conflict, at the level of the presidents and ministries of foreign affairs, and through cooperation with the OSCE Minsk Group’s co-chairs.

    Point 5 “emphasize[s] the importance of creating conditions that will contribute to the consolidation of trust, within the framework of efforts aimed at settling the conflict.” However vague, this point clearly does not imply that Azerbaijan ought to agree to Armenia’s inclusion in regional energy and transport projects in order to facilitate the resolution of the conflict.

    During the last few years, the European Union and even the United States have attempted to persuade Azerbaijan to include Armenia in regional projects before the Armenian forces withdraw from occupied territories, presumably in order to advance efforts for peace. Ideologically, this argument is a late legacy of the classical liberal belief that trade in and of itself promotes peace (“pipelines for peace” is a latter-day incarnation of that belief). On a more mundane level, that argument reflects the influence of political lobbies in Brussels and Washington, which has resulted in withholding funds from projects of Western interest in Western-oriented Azerbaijan. For its part, Azerbaijan is open to such cooperation with Armenia after the Armenian forces vacate the occupied territories and the refugees are free to return home.