The Turkey-Armenia-Azerbaijan Triangle: The Unexpected Outcomes of the Zurich Protocols Zaur SHIRIYEV* & Celia DAVIES** Abstract Key Words This paper analyses the domestic and regional Zurich Protocols, Turkish-Armenian impact of the Turkish-Armenian normalisation rapprochement/normalisation, Russo- process from the Azerbaijani perspective, with Georgian War, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, a focus on the changing dynamic of Ankara- Azerbaijani-Turkish relations. Baku relations. This line of enquiry is informed by international contexts, notably the 2008 Russian-Georgian war and the respective roles Introduction of the US and Russia. The first section reviews the changed regional dynamic following two regional crises: the August War and the Turkish- Between 2008 and 2009, Azerbaijan’s Armenian rapprochement. The second section foreign policy was thrown into a state analyses domestic reaction in Azerbaijan among of crisis. The Russo-Georgian War in political parties, the media, and the public. The third section will consider the normalisation August 2008 followed by the attempted process, from its inception through to its Turkish-Armenian rapprochement suspension. The authors find that the crisis in process (initiated in September 2008) Turkish-Azerbaijani relations has resulted in an intensification of the strategic partnership, unsettled geopolitical perspectives across concluding that the abortive normalisation the Caucasus and the wider region, process in many ways stabilised the pre-2008 throwing traditionally perceived axes status quo in terms of the geopolitical dynamics of the region. of threats and alliances into question. Before the dust had settled on the first conflict, another was already brewing, * Zaur Shiriyev is a foreign policy analyst based destabilising many of Azerbaijan’s in Azerbaijan, a columnist for Today’s Zaman, basic foreign policy assumptions. and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Caucasus International. Baku was confronted with the difficult ** Celia Davies is an Associate Editor at and traumatic task of redrawing its Caucasus International and an LLM candidate in International Law at the University of psychological map of the region, and, Edinburgh. consequently, its foreign policy agenda. 185 PERCEPTIONS, Spring 2013, Volume XVIII, Number 1, pp. 185-206. Zaur Shiriyev & Celia Davies The Turkish-Armenian rapprochement suspension of their ratification process. process generated serious concerns President Sargsyan’s statement did, in Azerbaijan, at both the public and however, express Yerevan’s “desire to governmental levels. The particular maintain the existing momentum for worry was how the improvement in normalizing relations”.1 The partial Turkish-Armenian relations would rapprochement led to vociferous debate affect the resolution of the Azerbaijani- in Azerbaijani society, paralysing political Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. groups in their visions of Turkey. The immediate cause of the closure of the Turkish-Armenian border was Armenia’s Two Crises: Redrawing the 1993 occupation of Kelbajar, one of the Political Landscape seven adjunct districts to Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region. Baku’s In geopolitical terms, the immediate resistance to the normalisation process casualty of Russia’s intervention in was and is based on the argument that Georgia was regional energy security. In the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh Azerbaijan’s eyes, the events of August conflict and the opening of the Turkish- 2008 revealed some uncomfortable Armenian border should, given their realities: first, that Georgia could no connection, move forward in parallel. longer be considered an entirely reliable The normalisation process saw an transit route for Azerbaijan’s oil and agreement to establish mutual diplomatic gas, and second, that Russia would be recognition, culminating in the Zurich willing to use its military and political Protocols in October 2009, signed in the arsenal for the destruction of Azerbaijani presence of the Russian, French and Swiss and Caspian hydrocarbon exports.2 foreign ministers and the US Secretary of Furthermore, the war significantly State. However, neither party has ratified changed Azerbaijan’s perceptions of the the protocols, and the process has EU, NATO and the US in terms of their essentially been frozen pending progress political clout and regional strategies. on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Six Many among the Azerbaijani political months after the signing, Prime Minister elite were convinced that the EU was ill- Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s declaration that prepared to deal with a major crisis in its Turkish parliamentary ratification was eastern neighbourhood, that the price of contingent on the conflict resolution NATO membership was too great, and progress prompted condemnation that the US would struggle to balance from the Armenian side, and an official Moscow’s influence in the Caucasus. 186 The Unexpected Outcomes of the Zurich Protocols In the end, Georgia’s physical energy Azerbaijan, and Russia following talks in infrastructure was essentially unharmed, Moscow in November 2008 sent a clear though total conflict-related damage was signal regarding Russian influence and estimated at US $38 million.3 The real its continued position as chief peace- damage was to international perceptions broker, bolstering President Medvedev’s of the region’s energy security, the cost of claim in late August 2008 that Russia which remains hard to gauge. had “privileged interests” in its bordering countries. The war significantly changed Azerbaijan’s perceptions of the The August War also led Baku to EU, NATO and the US in reconsider its faith in the nature of US terms of their political clout and regional engagement. Prior to August regional strategies. 2008, Baku had seen Washington as a potential deterrent to Russian regional supremacy, and despite the political The war compelled Baku to abandon support Tbilisi enjoyed from President its assumption that Russia would Bush at the height of the conflict,5 refrain from acts of aggression against Baku struggled to revise its impression its neighbours. Russia’s willingness to with the Russian reset policy initially deploy military force- even after the pursued by the Obama administration. signing of the EU-brokered Six Point Azerbaijan was frustrated by what it saw Peace Plan4- revealed new regional as a shift in US regional engagement, realities, whereby Moscow’s grip on the whereby the Georgian-Azerbaijani region is arguably stronger than ever. tandem was replaced by a focus on the Russia’s recognition of the independence Turkish-Armenian rapprochement. That of the breakaway territories of Abkhazia Washington was pressing Ankara to and South Ossetia was worrying for normalise relations with Yerevan without Azerbaijan in the context of another making any causal link to the unresolved territorial conflict: Nagorno-Karabakh. Nagorno-Karabakh conflict- the reason Though Moscow hastened to say that that Turkey had originally closed its the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict should borders in 1993- angered Azerbaijan and be considered as a separate issue, Baku seriously threatened relations with the perceived an implicit threat. The Erdoğan government. signing of the Moscow Declaration “On Regulating the Nagorno-Karabakh Baku perceived Washington’s Conflict” by the presidents of Armenia, rapprochement initiative as the flashy 187 Zaur Shiriyev & Celia Davies centrepiece in complex negotiations expressing wariness. Though there was between the Obama administration, no explicit rejection of the initiative by Armenian advocacy groups in the US, Tbilisi, Georgian analysts feared that a the Armenian government, and Turkey. significant component of the CSCP, the The US administration, unable to deliver proposed Turkish-Armenian deal, would on promises of genocide recognition, pose a threat to Georgia’s economic and instead sought to alleviate Armenia’s security interests.9 economic predicament by opening the Turkey-Armenia border. A significant The US administration, unable improvement in relations between to deliver on promises of Ankara and Yerevan, argued many genocide recognition, instead US strategists, would not only help to sought to alleviate Armenia’s stabilise the volatile South Caucasus but economic predicament by would also reduce Armenia’s political and economic dependence on Russia opening the Turkey-Armenia and Iran, which would clearly serve border. American interests. For Ankara, the Russo-Georgian Primarily, the normalisation of conflict provided a catalyst for regional Turkish-Armenian relations would rapprochement. After a ceasefire stopped weaken Georgia’s position as a major the violent five-day war, Prime Minister transit country in the region and Tbilisi Erdoğan released his proposal for a could lose its dominant position in “Caucasus Stability and Cooperation energy projects. Secondly, if Armenia Platform” (CSCP), aimed at fostering were to become less dependent on peaceful relations across a region Georgia, it could become more active that had become increasingly vital to in supporting the demands of Armenian Turkey’s energy interests, in line with nationalist groups active in the Georgian his Foreign Ministry’s “zero problems province of Samtskhe-Javakheti, with neighbours policy”.6 Ankara sought threatening domestic and regional to work in close cooperation with stability. Furthermore, the whole process Moscow on the details of the initiative,7 was perceived by Tbilisi officials as part and Russia, happy to see a regional of a common