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Models of Coexistence of Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Georgia

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AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF ARMENIA MODELS OF COEXISTENCE OF ARMENIANS AND AZERBAIJANIS IN GEORGIA A MASTER ESSAY SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE SCHOOL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS FOR PARTIAL FULFILLEMENT OF THE DEGREE OF MASTERS OF ARTS BY GRETA AVETISYAN YEREVAN, ARMENIA APRIL 2014 1 SIGNATURE PAGE Faculty Advisor Date Program Chair Date American University of Armenia APRIL 2014 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It would not have been possible to write this Master’s thesis without the help and support of the people around me, to only some of whom I give particular mention here. Above all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my Faculty Advisor Dr. Vahram Ter-Matevosyan for the continuous support of my study and research, for his patience, motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge. His guidance helped me in all the time of my research and writing of this thesis. I could not have imagined having a better advisor and mentor for my Master’s essay. The good advice, support and friendship of my supervisor have been invaluable on both an academic and an individual level, for which I am extremely grateful. I would like to express my deepest appreciation to the Program Chair of the Department of Political Science and International Affairs Dr. Shumavon for his guidance, for his help during the whole process of doing the research and writing the Master’s essay. I also want to thank him for always reminding us about the coming deadlines for submitting each chapter and keeping us in the track. Furthermore, I want to express my special thanks to the whole faculty and staff of the School of the Political Science and International Affairs for the support and the encouragement that I got during these two unforgettable years. The atmosphere, the smiling and friendly faces that one can find at AUA are invaluable and make you not simply study, but also enjoy every moment spent in the campus. I owe my deepest gratitude to my colleges, the staff of the European Integration NGO, for their support, their positive atmosphere and their encouragement to believe in me and write a good Master’s essay. My heartfelt appreciation goes to Karen Bekaryan, the president of the European Integration NGO, for his advice, guidance and the help to do my survey in the Marneuli region in Georgia. 3 Special thanks to my friends and my mentor Madlene Minasyan for always being with me, encouraging me and giving me helpful advice. I also want to thank Arthur Atanesyan for helping me to develop my survey questionnaire. Finally, I want to thank to all the experts interviewed for the research for patiently answering my questions and for having their contribution in having a quality paper, as they opened a lot of aspects of my research that would be difficult or even impossible to find in any literature. 4 Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………..6 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………....7 Literature Review……………………………………………………………………………...9 Methodology............................................................................................................................21 Chapter 1: Protection of the Rights of Minorities and Georgia’s Politics towards its Ethnic Groups………………………………………………………………………………………..23 1.1 Minority Rights ……………………………………………………………....23 1.2 Minority Rights in Georgia…………………………………………………...29 1.3 Georgia’s Politics towards Minorities …………………………………….....33 1.4 ENP Progress Reports………………………………………………………...36 Chapter 2: Primary Data Analysis………………………………………………….………..39 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………51 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………….54 Appendix1……………………………………………………………………………………59 Appendix2……………………………………………………………………………………64 Appendix3……………………………………………………………………………………65 5 Abstract Georgia is a multi-ethnic country with the largest minority groups being Azerbaijanis and Armenians. These national minorities are mainly concentrated in two regions: Kvemo Kartli, where the majority of the population is Azerbaijanis and Samtskhe-Javakheti – Armenians constituting the majority. This study puts its main emphasis on the Marneuli region in the Kvemo-Kartli region where both Armenians and Azerbaijanis live, though Azerbaijanis are the majority, comprising 80% of the population, and Armenians comprising 5%. The aim of the paper is to find the factors that have given rise to the model of peaceful coexistence of these two minority groups irrespective of the conflict between the two nations over Nagorno-Karabakh. The purpose of the present Master’s essay is to find the factors that contribute to the peaceful coexistence of Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the Marneuli region in Georgia. The ultimate aim is to find and explore the models which help both Azerbaijanis and Armenians live next door to each other without any conflict and to prove that these two people are able to get along fine. The topic studied is quite relevant nowadays for several reasons. First of all, everyone knows that tensions between Azerbaijanis and Armenians still continue and these tensions come from the conflict that arose about 26 years ago. Many people in Artsakh cannot imagine themselves living with Azerbaijanis in the same territory. This is because of their historical memory and because of the bad implications associated with Azerbaijanis. Still president, Robert Kocharyan also in one occasion expressed such an opinion that Armenians and Azerbaijanis are genetically incompatible. However, in the Marneuli region in Georgia there are Armenians and Azerbaijanis who live together without any conflict. Besides, little research has been done on finding the factors that have contributed to the maintenance of the peaceful coexistence of Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the Marneuli region in Georgia. 6 Introduction The Master’s essay reviews what has been done different scholars so far on finding out the models of peaceful coexistence in different parts of the world, also of Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the Marneuli region. To have a full understanding of those factors, the paper gives the definitions of nationality and ethnicity by different scholars, then concentrates on the Georgian politics, constitutional and legal provisions concerning the protection of the rights of national minorities and their possible integration. Special attention is paid on the administrations of the presidents of Georgia and the differences of their policies. The aim of putting a special emphasis on the policies of the presidents is to see whether their policies have had any impact on the lives of the people living in the Marneuli region and whether their administrations have played any role in the formation of the model of peaceful coexistence of Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Finally, the paper concentrates on the Marneuli region and with the help of the survey done among the people living in this region and the interviews with experts tries to give a full picture of the model of coexistence and the factors that have contributed to it. H1: The peaceful coexistence of Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the Marneuli region of Georgia has been ensured by the strong central administration and the belief of the ethnic groups that politics should be kept away from their places of residence. To prove this hypothesis, the following research questions should be answered: RQ 1: What were the policies of the three Georgian presidents towards the ethnic groups of the country? RQ 2: What are the factors that have contributed to the peaceful coexistence of Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the Marneuli region in Georgia? 7 RQ 3: What role have the central authorities and the self-governing bodies of Georgia played in ensuring the peaceful coexistence of Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the Marneuli region? RQ 4: What are the perceptions of Armenians and Azerbaijanis concerning the fact that despite the existence of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, they can peacefully live together? 8 Literature Review Nationalism Nationalism was one of the most important and the most powerful concepts of the twentieth century and it still remains so. This concept can be considered revolutionary in the international politics. It has been the cause of the collapse of the European empires; it has ended colonialism, and has eroded the basis of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia (Barrington, 2006). Brubaker (2011) considers the language of nationalism to be an international discourse that has been adapted to the new settings and has sometimes been mixed with different traditions. All these, according to him, form a kind of a package that has both organizational and cultural components. The organizational component contains the main characteristics of the bureaucratic territorial state that is governed by a direct rule and through a bureaucratic administrative staff. By saying the cultural component Brubaker means the collective idea of peoplehood, nationhood and citizenship, and those people that are ruled by the state are not the subjects of that state but the citizens. Citizens in this case are understood in the form of collectivity, a nation that possesses common features and characters (Brubaker, 2011). There are various definitions of nationalism, but these definitions are mainly overlapping and stress the importance of understanding the concept of the nation before passing to nationalism. Smith (2010) posits that while defining the concept of the nation one should not forget to make a distinction between the objective factors, like language, territory, religion and subjective ones – attitude
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