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  • ANKARA: Turk Troubles In Caucasus

    TURK TROUBLES IN CAUCASUS
    By Michael Reynolds

    www.worldbulletin.net
    Sept 1 2008
    Turkey

    There are abundant reasons for one to expect that Turkey would have
    been following events in Georgia and the Caucasus with great diligence.

    The outbreak of the Russian-Georgian War earlier this month apparently
    caught Ankara as poorly prepared as it caught Washington. The Turkish
    Foreign Ministry's section dealing with the Caucasus reportedly was
    virtually unstaffed. The head of the section was in Mosul on temporary
    assignment, the section's number-two spot is empty and has been for the
    last six months. The number three was also away on temporary assignment
    in Nakhichevan and the other assigned section members were on vacation,
    thus forcing on-duty diplomats from other desks to scramble.

    This may surprise. There are abundant reasons for one to expect that
    Turkey would have been following events in Georgia and the Caucasus
    with great diligence. The two countries share common borders and
    intertwined histories. Istanbul ruled large chunks of the Caucasus,
    including much of Georgia, for centuries, and today there remains
    inside Turkey a small but vibrant community of Abkhazians and related
    Caucasian peoples. Russia for most of the past three centuries has
    loomed over Turkey as its greatest rival and threat, yet at critical
    times, such as during the Turkish War of Independence (1919-22), it
    has been a key ally. Today Russia supplies somewhere around 70 percent
    of Turkey's natural gas and is Turkey's second largest trading partner.

    Georgia is a transit point for Caspian and Central Asian oil and
    gas and as such is critical to Turkey's ambitions to become an
    energy hub and to diversify its own energy supplies. As a member
    of NATO, Turkey has been involved in training and supplying the
    Georgian military. Finally, given Turkey's own struggle with Kurdish
    separatists, other instances of ethno-separatism and border revision
    logically should command Ankara's keen attention. In short, both
    Russia and Georgia are of great strategic, economic, and historic
    importance to Turkey, and the principles of territorial integrity and
    self-determination over which the Russo-Georgian War was (nominally)
    fought are directly relevant to the most sensitive of Turkey's
    security concerns.

    Turkey's lack of preparedness for the Russo-Georgian war is not
    coincidental, but instead reflects a long-standing legacy of
    Kemalism. The fundamental precept of the foreign policy course
    laid out by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, summed up in his famous phrase,
    "Peace at home, peace in the world," was that Turkey should bury its
    imperial past, avoid foreign entanglements, and focus on internal
    development. Thus the Turkish Republic deliberately isolated itself
    from its neighbors, especially those to its south and east. It cut
    cultural and other ties across the board, and preferred cordial
    but distant relations over close involvement and interaction. As a
    result, Turkey today has a strong cadre of diplomats, professors,
    analysts and others fluent in English and familiar with the United
    States and Western Europe, but it lacks the sort of expertise about
    its own neighborhood that one might assume it would naturally possess
    given its imperial history. Although challenges to this policy of
    isolation have emerged on occasion (briefly in the 1950s and perhaps
    during the early 1990s), a preference for cool detachment and inward
    focus has remained dominant in the Turkish bureaucracy.

    There is much to be said for avoiding foreign entanglements, and
    the reasoning behind "Peace at home, peace abroad" was anything but
    frivolous. Yet self-imposed isolation carries its own costs. Those
    costs rose precipitately for Turkey following the end of the Cold
    War as its neighborhood underwent tremendous political and economic
    transformation. Ignoring the events taking place around it was no
    solution. At this time, Turkey's self-confidence began to grow, and
    more Turks began to advocate that their country play a more active
    role in its region. One positive development has been the emergence in
    Turkey of think-tanks, both official and non-governmental, dedicated
    to foreign and domestic issues.

    Old habits and institutional practices die hard, however, and playing
    an active role in such a complex region is no simple matter. As a
    way to break out of the old mindset and gain experience in regional
    affairs without great risk, Turkey has been trying to play the role of
    mediator in regional conflicts. The architect of this approach is Ahmet
    Davutoglu, a former professor and close adviser to Prime Minister Recep
    Tayyip Erdogan who now holds the rank of ambassador. Thus Turkey has
    involved itself in negotiations between Syria and Israel. Similarly,
    Turkey's Foreign Minister Ali Babacan has at times tried to position
    himself as a broker between the West and Iran.

    Erdogan in the midst of the Russo-Georgian War tried to apply a
    slightly more advanced variant of this formula by flying to Moscow,
    Tiblisi, and Baku and proposing a "Caucasus Stability and Cooperation
    Platform." The idea of the platform, which is sometimes also called
    a pact, is to bring together the three South Caucasian states of
    Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan with Turkey and Russia, and enable
    them to mediate and solve their conflicts among themselves.

    The idea sounds attractive, but it will not go far. Such pacts
    can work only if all members are willing to prioritize stability
    and good relations over their other interests. Yet if there is one
    thing we know, it is that there is no consensus for stability in the
    Caucasus. Russia just mounted a calculated and successful effort to
    overthrow the status quo in the Caucasus at the expense of another
    putative pact member, Georgia. Russia's war aims, moreover, extend
    beyond altering the balance of power in the Caucasus to restoring
    its position as the dominant power in Eurasia and restructuring its
    relations with the United States and Europe. Abkhazia and South Ossetia
    are pawns in a game bigger than the Caucasus. The notion that what
    Russia and Georgia need in order to come to a mutually satisfactory
    agreement is a nearby neutral venue for their diplomats to meet
    verges on the surreal. Perhaps for this reason, the Russian press
    chose to give short shrift to Erdogan's call for a stability pact,
    and instead interpret his visit as signifying support for Russia in
    South Ossetia. It was not the finest moment in Turkish diplomacy.

    Azerbaijan is another state in the Caucasus that has for some time
    been voicing an intense dissatisfaction with the status quo. In recent
    months, Baku has been dropping subtle threats that it might seek to
    revise it by going to war. In particular, Azerbaijan is dissatisfied
    with the outcome of the war it fought with Armenian forces over
    Nagorno-Karabakh (to use the most widespread English rendering of
    the region's name), a predominantly Armenian enclave (technically it
    held the title of "autonomous oblast" in the Soviet Union) inside the
    Republic of Azerbaijan. The Karabakh War started in 1988, i.e. when
    the Soviet Union was still in existence, and ended with a ceasefire
    some six years later in 1994. During the war not only did Karabakh
    break free of Baku's control, but Armenian forces managed to seize
    roughly fifteen percent of the Republic of Azerbaijan's territory
    and expelled the Azeri inhabitants thereof, some 800,000 people.

    Since that time, Baku has not been able to achieve any redress through
    diplomatic measures. But thanks to foreign investment in its oil
    industry it has accumulated some wealth, and has used that wealth to
    engage in a military build-up. Whether or not Azerbaijan's military is
    capable of defeating and driving out Armenian forces and restoring the
    occupied territories and Karabakh to Baku is by no means clear, but
    building frustration among Azeris might tempt them to test their luck.

    Turkey and Armenia are the two states in the Caucasus that have the
    greatest interest in preserving and building upon the status quo. The
    Armenians, i.e. the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) and
    the Republic of Armenia, won the Karabakh War and wish to keep their
    gains. They would like Azerbaijan and the wider world to acknowledge
    the de facto independent NKR as sovereign Armenian territory (either
    as part of the Armenian Republic proper or as a separate republic).

    Armenia in addition would like to see Turkey lift the blockade it
    imposed in 1993 in response to the Armenians' seizure of Azerbaijani
    territory. That blockade has stunted land-locked Armenia's economic
    development, leaving it dependent upon Georgia and Iran for surface
    routes to the outside world. The disruption Russia's invasion
    has caused to the operations of Georgia's ports, rail lines, and
    roads (ironically, Turkish goods are among the biggest commodities
    imported along those roads into Armenia) has hit Armenia's economy
    especially hard. and underscored Armenia's isolation and fundamental
    vulnerability. Indeed, even before this most recent war, it was clear
    that Armenia's lack of relations with Turkey had left it excessively
    dependent upon Russia--an unhealthy situation for any state pretending
    to sovereign status. (Indeed, with Armenia already virtually in its
    back pocket, one might imagine that Russia may seek to woo Azerbaijan
    to its side by compelling Armenian concessions on Karabakh.)

    For its part, Turkey since the end of the Cold War has benefited in
    numerous ways from the retreat of Russian power and had reason to be
    generally satisfied with the state of affairs in the Caucasus prior
    to this war. The big exception is the state of its relations with
    Armenia. Although Turkey was one of the very first states to recognize
    Armenia's independence in 1991, it never followed up to establish
    relations. Several difficult issues divide the two states. One bone
    of contention between them is Turkey's insistence that Armenia
    definitively renounce any claims on the territory of the Turkish
    Republic. Another is Armenia's insistence that Turkey recognize the
    massacres and deportations from Anatolia of Ottoman Armenians during
    and after World War One as a genocide. A third is Turkey's demand that
    Armenia withdraw from the territory of Azerbaijan that it occupies.

    A fourth issue is, of course, the blockade. Although the imposition
    of the blockade was greatly appreciated by Azerbaijan, which sees
    itself as the victim of Armenian aggression, it has harmed Turkey's
    image worldwide by reinforcing the stereotype of the "Terrible Turk"
    as a bully. This is something the Turks, never mind the Azeris,
    find particularly irksome given that it is the Armenians now who are
    occupying territory seized in war. Turkish support for Azerbaijan has
    impaired Turkish efforts to counter the lobbying by Armenian diaspora
    groups of legislative bodies worldwide to classify the mass deaths of
    Ottoman Armenians in 1915 as genocide. Opening the border with Armenia,
    some Turkish officials believe, would enable Turkey to thwart these
    efforts more effectively.

    Economics provides another incentive for Turkey to open its
    borders. Turkey's east is isolated, distant from markets, and remains
    underdeveloped. Opening the border with Armenia would provide a boost
    to the local economy by enabling cross-border trade. It would also
    make available better routing options for oil and gas pipelines
    from the Caspian and export corridors to the Caspian and beyond,
    and thereby provide a boon to Turkey's national economy as well.

    In a gesture intended perhaps to break the stalemate in
    Turkish-Armenian relations, the Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian
    invited his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul to come to Yerevan on
    September 6 to watch the national soccer teams of the two nations
    play a World Cup qualifying match. Gul, some Turks hope, will seize
    the moment to initiate a major shift in the region's diplomacy. Gul
    has not yet committed. Were Gul to do so, it would mark a significant
    change not just in Turkish-Armenian relations, but even more so in
    Turkish diplomacy, which has a tradition of working slowly and with
    exceeding caution, and of letting opportunities slip by.

    Indeed, with Russian forces now inside Georgia, both Turkey and Armenia
    (as well as Azerbaijan) probably already have missed an opportunity to
    overcome their differences and to chart a path toward more secure and
    prosperous futures for their societies. The Russian state, whether
    in its Tsarist, Soviet, and contemporary forms has demonstrated
    substantial skill in manipulating ethnic and other cleavages on
    its borderlands to weaken its competitors. It is worth remembering
    that Russia was involved in the emergence of all of the conflicts
    mentioned above (Turkish-Armenian, Azeri-Armenian, Ossetian-Georgian,
    and Abkhazian-Georgian) among others. That is not to say that Russia
    invented these conflicts. Hardly. At times Russia has expended
    considerable efforts to contain and resolve them. But Russia is not
    an outsider to them and possesses an intimate familiarity with them--a
    familiarity that it can, has, and will deploy to its advantage.

    Strength is a relative thing. Sapping the cohesion and power of
    one's potential rivals is often as effective, and occasionally even
    more useful, a method for overcoming them than is building up one's
    own strength. There are more fissures for Russia to exploit in the
    Caucasus. The Turkish-Armenian-Azerbaijani fissure is an easy one to
    exploit. For reasons of history, memory, and culture, all of these
    societies remain deeply conflicted regarding relations with each
    other. Finding and pushing the buttons to poison the atmosphere and
    disrupt any move toward reconciliation is not difficult.

    Russia exerts tremendous influence over Armenia, and considerable
    influence over Azerbaijan. Turkey, too, is vulnerable to Russian
    pressure. Already Turkish businessmen are fretting over the way
    increased scrutiny by Russian customs of their goods is harming
    Turkish exports and are wondering if such scrutiny is intended as a
    message to Turkey to refrain from close cooperation with the United
    States against Russia.

    Keeping Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan at loggerheads serves Russia
    by neutralizing the power and options of its Caucasian neighbors,
    keeping them dependent, and blocking the development of the Caucasus as
    an alternative corridor for energy and trade. It also serves varied
    domestic interests in each of those states. But it does nothing
    for those societies aside from depriving them of options for future
    development.

    It is not clear that Russia's defeat of Georgia will restore it to
    the position of hegemon in the Caucasus, but it will increase Moscow's
    ability to play the role of regional spoiler. Although many Turks and
    Armenians retain doubts about the propriety of closer relations between
    their countries, important constituencies inside the governments and
    societies of the two nations recognize the multiple benefits better
    ties would bring. Their difficulty is convincing others that improved
    relations are, in fact, conceivable. Thus were Gul and Sarkisian to
    meet this September and announce together that they intend that their
    states should, together with Azerbaijan, overcome their differences,
    their words would have a real impact.

    As the larger, more senior, more established, and more powerful state,
    Turkey is the better candidate to take the lead in the drive toward
    reconciliation. But it is not likely to happen. With Russia inside
    Georgia, and the Caucasus reverting again to a theater of Great Power
    confrontation, time is running out. Boldness is required. Yet whereas
    Moscow drew from its imperial collapse the lesson that fortune favors
    the bold, Ankara took from the Ottoman experience the lesson that
    extreme discretion is the better part of valor.
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