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Caucasus Neighborhood: Turkey and the South Caucasus CAUCASUS NEIGHBORHOOD: TURKEY AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUS Caucasus Institute Yerevan 2008 UDC 32.001 CAUCASUS NEIGHBORHOOD: TURKEY AND THE SOUTH CAUCA- SUS. Yerevan: CI, 2008. – 146 p. The volume focuses on the roles played by Turkey and the countries and unrecognized entities of the South Caucasus in regional integration and the management of the region’s ethnopolitical conflicts. The analytical papers are based on presentations made at a CI-organized conference in Istanbul on August 1-4, 2008 by independent experts from Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia. Edited by Alexander Iskandaryan Editorial team: Nina Iskandaryan, Sergey Minasyan, Vitaly Kisin Cover design by Matit www.matit.am Cover photo by Inna Mkhitaryan Layout by Collage www.collage.am ISBN 978-99941-2-220-2 © 2008 by the Caucasus Institute The publication of this volume was supported by the United Nations and the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency CONTENTS FOREWORD. 5 Alexander Iskandaryan SOUTH CAUCASUS BETWEEN ISOLATION AND INTEGRATION: GENESIS AND PROSPECTS . 7 Diba Nigar Goksel TURKEY’S POLICY TOWARDS THE CAUCASUS . 14 Hikmet Hajizadeh AZERBAIJAN: REGIONAL INTEGRATION IN AN EXPLOSIVE REGION AND THE NEXT TEN YEARS OF THE SOUTH CAUCASUS . 26 Gevorg Ter-Gabrielyan ARMENIA AND THE CAUCASUS: CROSSROADS OR DEAD END?. 36 Ivlian Khaindrava GEORGIA: BETWEEN THE SOUTH CAUCASUS AND THE BLACK SEA (IN THE MIDST OF MOSCOW, WASHINGTON AND BRUSSELS) . 48 Sergey Minasyan ARMENIA IN KARABAKH, KARABAKH IN ARMENIA: THE KARABAKH FACTOR IN ARMENIA’S FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY . 63 Rasim Musabayov NAGORNO-KARABAKH: A FACTOR IN AZERBAIJAN’S FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY . 73 Masis Mailyan THE PLACE OF NAGORNO-KARABAKH WITHIN THE REGION: PROSPECTS AND DEAD ENDS . 87 Paata Zakareishvili GEORGIA AND THE CONFLICTS ON ITS TERRITORY. 94 Kosta Dzugaev OSSETIA: THE CONFLICT WITH GEORGIA AND PROBLEMS OF SURVIVAL . 106 Vitaly Sharia ABKHAZIA IN THE MIDST OF RUSSIA, GEORGIA AND TURKEY . 113 Aybars Görgülü TURKEY-ARMENIA RELATIONS: AN ETERNAL DEADLOCK? . 124 Authors . 146 FOREWORD This book is a collection of papers from the conference entitled “Cau- casus Neighborhood: Turkey and the South Caucasus” which was held in Istanbul on August 1-4, 2008. Its participants were NGO actors from Turkey and various parts of the South Caucasus, including the three international- ly recognized republics and three unrecognized entities. Participants made their presentations and went home; three days later, war began in South Ossetia. The South Caucasus once again became the focus of international attention. Its problems once again became the concern of superpowers. New efforts to resolve its conflicts are being made by various governmental and non-governmental organizations based in Europe, the U.S., Russia and the South Caucasus itself. The conflicts did not spring up in August 2008. Ever since the disinte- gration of the USSR, the region has had to face problematic interaction between recognized and unrecognized political entities, ethnic groups, polit- ical movements and militarized groups. In the two post-Soviet decades, all these problems have become closely intertwined and have never ceased to interfere with the region’s development, obstructing regional communication projects, preventing countries from joining forces in order to deal with com- mon problems, and hindering economic integration and the creation of a common market. The fact that parts of the South Caucasus remain isolated from one another and from their neighbors is one of the main obstacles to sustainable development in the region. The very name of the conference, and now also of the volume, was chosen in analogy to the European Neighborhood, the project that the countries of the South Caucasus joined with great enthusi- asm. However, in their quest for a place in the global world, the countries of the South Caucasus usually look very far and very often fail to notice each other and their immediate neighbors. During long years within the USSR, the South Caucasus has become psychologically and culturally detached from adjacent countries, including Turkey. Almost two decades after the dis- integration of the USSR, the South Caucasus is not adequately reflected in the political discourses existing in Turkey, whereas in the South Caucasus, Turkey is not fully perceived as an important regional player. Meanwhile, if efforts to understand the region as a whole and not as a number of detached constituencies are to be effective, these efforts must embrace all adjacent countries. Debates on regional development should not only be held in Brussels, Strasbourg or Moscow, but also in Istanbul, Yere- 6/ Foreword van, Tbilisi and Baku. One of the reasons why the Caucasus Neighborhood conference was held in Istanbul was the fact that it would have been impos- sible in any of the cities of the South Caucasus, because, for example, par- ticipants from Yerevan would have had problems with going to Baku, par- ticipants from Sukhumi, with traveling to Tbilisi, and so on. In the framework of this project, we tried to overcome these difficulties. Participants of the conference came from all recognized and unrecognized entities of the South Caucasus. They represented their societies, not their states. While speaking about the challenges faced by their societies, they placed them in the regional context in all its complexity and variety. In the papers collected in this volume, revised after the war in South Ossetia, the authors analyzed regional development prospects based on current trends and the positions of all regional players. We are very grateful to all participants for their input into the project which was an intellectual act of courage for many. Our thanks go to the United Nations and the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency whose support made the conference and the book possible. We hope that the book will not remain the only effort to understand the South Caucasus as a region seen both from inside and from the Bosphorus. Unless such efforts are made, our region may never start to exist. Disclaimer The papers in this volume reflect the personal opinions of the authors and not those of the Caucasus Institute, the United Nations, the SDC or any other organizations, including the organizations with which the authors are affiliated. The spellings of some personal and geographical names form part of conflict discourses existing in the South Caucasus. To avoid misunderstanding, all names used in the papers in this volume are spelled the way they were spelled by the authors. Alexander Iskandaryan Yerevan, November 2008 SOUTH CAUCASUS BETWEEN ISOLATION AND INTEGRATION: GENESIS AND PROSPECTS BY ALEXANDER ISKANDARYAN The South Caucasus is a relatively small region situated between the Black and Caspian Sees, bordering on Russia, Turkey and Iran. The area of the South Caucasus is smaller than that of the United Kingdom, and its population, roughly that of the Netherlands. An isthmus connecting Russia to the Near East and Central Asia to Europe, it has strategic significance for the development of a large and important region lying on the intersection between South-Eastern Europe and the Greater Near East. To understand the current developments in the South Caucasus, it is use- ful to look at the genesis of this region. The notion of South Caucasus as a cohesive region with more or less clearly defined borders originated fairly recently. Up to the 19th century, parts of the region belonged to the Persian and Ottoman Empires, or to feudalized principalities and kingdoms located between the two empires. People living in the region did not realize they had anything in common, and there was no such thing as a “Caucasian identi- ty”. Numerous religious, local and ethno-linguistic identities coexisted and overlapped. A person could identify as a Persian-speaking resident of She- makha belonging to the Armenian Apostolic Church, or a Georgian-speak- ing Sunni Muslim resident in Adjaria and subject of the Turkish Sultan. Even the educated people of the time had no idea about living in a com- mon region. In the early 19th century, the region was annexed by the Russian Empire as a result of several waves of Russian-Turkish and Russian-Persian wars. A name was needed to refer to the new lands in administrative papers. The new name, “Transcaucasia” or “Transcaucasus”, was a very natural coinage for parts of the Russian Empire lying on the other side of the Caucasus Moun- tain Range. After a while, the lands known as Transcaucasus began to be perceived as a unified region by internal as well as external actors. By its very name, the new region had a natural boundary on the north – the Caucasus Mountains. In the beginning, it did not have a southern boundary. It was the border of the Russian Empire, and later that of the Soviet Union, that became the southern border of the Transcaucasus. The border changed sev- eral times as a result of wars and political developments. Thus, from the 1870s until the 1920s, the Transcaucasus included three regions - Kars, Ardahan and Surmalu – that were at that time included in the Russian Empire but have since been parts of Turkey. However, most of the territo- 8/ Alexander Iskandaryan ry of the Transcaucasus – the part of the Russian Empire south of the Cau- casus Mountains – gradually merged into a whole by means of economy, transportation routes and cultural policies, and became a unified region. A common education system, common legislation, increasingly wide- spread use of Russian as the regional lingua franca (interethnic communica- tion language), a road network connecting the region to the center of the Empire, the state borders on the south, and an emerging common market – all this made people living in the Transcaucasus gradually lose their con- nections to former parent countries such as Persia or Turkey, and identify themselves with the new region. Their obvious cultural and geographical dis- similarity to Central Russia led to the emergence of a super-ethnic cross- cultural identity of “Caucasians” who began to see themselves as a separate group within the Empire.
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