Balkanalysis.com

Can Turkey Salvage Sabotaged Relations with Armenia?

Armenia’s president, Robert Kocharian, will not appear at the NATO summit of 27-29 June to be held in Istanbul, owing to the continued political alienation between his country and its historic nemesis to the west.

While signs seemed encouraging not long ago that Turkey might end its 11-year blockade and open the border with Armenia, that possibility was unceremoniously quashed by continued bellyaching from Baku. Azerbaijan has demanded that its historic allies and ethnic kin, the Turks, support it over the intractable Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. For the Azerbaijanis, Turkey’s opening the border before a settlement has been reached would be tantamount to betrayal. According to an article published today,

“…Turkey signaled last year its readiness to reopen its border with Armenia before a Karabakh settlement — a move which would please the United States and the European Union but would jeopardize its close ties with Azerbaijan. Some Armenian sources involved in contacts with Turkish officials said earlier this year that the decision to lift the 11-year blockade might be announced during the NATO summit.

However, Kocharian’s decision not to travel to Istanbul suggests that the reopening of the Turkish-Armenian border is still not on the cards.”

Armenian presidential press secretary Ashot Kocharian hastened to add that the decision “…has nothing to do with the Armenia-NATO relationship which is currently on the rise.” He mentioned Armenia’s participation in the U.S.-led alliance’s Partnership for Peace program. A less senior official than President Kocharian will make the trip, and it is hoped that tripartite peace talks will be held on the sidelines of the summit.

According to the same article,

“…Turkish leaders reportedly assured Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliev last month that they will continue to link the normalization of relations with Armenia to a pro Azerbaijani solution to the Karabakh dispute. ‘It is out of the question for now to reopen the Turkish-Armenian border,’ Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said afterward.”

According to Gul, “…such a thing [opening the border before a settlement] is not the issue. For some reason, this is spoken about a great deal in Azerbaijan. Whenever we come across Azeri reporters they ask us this question.”

However, given the longstanding nature of the dispute and the likelihood that no solution will satisfy Baku’s desires, the Turks will probably be waiting a long time to normalize relations with Armenia. Which is too bad for them, considering that having friendly relations with one’s neighbors is looked upon as a big plus by the European Union, which Turkey hopes to join someday.

So what, then, do the Turks get for their endless support for Azerbaijan’s territorial pretensions? Aside from a sort of patriotic satisfaction, not very much.

Some in Turkey can see that they’re getting a raw deal. Besides hindering its drive towards EU membership, Turkey’s uncompromising support for Baku is unhelpful because it is not reciprocated. The newspaper Radikal recently reflected on why Azerbaijan, purported to be such a close ally, has not done more to support the self-declared “Turkish Republic of North Cyprus,” considering the similarities between this situation and the Nagorno-Karabakh one:

“…The issue also carries a geopolitical aspect. The TRNC is a concrete form of separation in the context of international relations and was formed unilaterally as a result of military intervention by Turkey. However, today’s geopolitics frowns on separatism, micro-nationalism and political formations based on ethnicity excepting where there is mutual consent. On the contrary, today’s geopolitics favors integration based upon democracy, political equality and economic sharing. This is another political reason why the TRNC is not recognized. The interests and policies of countries faced with splits or threatened by separation are in line with this geopolitics.

One of those countries is Azerbaijan, with its problem of upper Karabakh. The serious problem faced by Baku is that 20% of its land is currently occupied by Armenia and the upper Karabakh separatist movement. Therefore, the Azerbaijani representatives in the European Council’s Parliament were leaning towards not recognizing the TRNC. ‘The Parliament vote would mean recognizing the TRNC,’ said one Azerbaijani official. ‘This would set a risky precedent for the future recognition of the administration in upper Karabakh.’ This development should remind Turkey that in international relations there is no friendship or brotherhood, but only interests.”

That said, we might ask whether Turkey’s interests are being respected in the case of Armenian relations. A Eurasianet.org article published one month ago, entitled “Could Turkey Spoil Nagorno-Karabakh Peace?” disingenuously misrepresents the question. It does so by framing the debate in the typical guise of a clash between Caucasus neighbors, rather than to look for once at Turkish-Armenian relations as being a legitimate and significant topic in its own right. In this light, we could rephrase the crucial debate as being, rather, “Could Azerbaijan Spoil Armenian-Turkish Peace?”

Azerbaijani officials continue to play the issue for nationalist effect, relying on the handy “backup” of having great natural resource riches at their disposal. President Ilham Aliyev makes fulsome statements to the effect that:

“…Turkey is a great and powerful nation and I am sure that Turkey will withstand the pressures [to open its border with Armenia]… the Turkish-Azerbaijani brotherhood is above everything.”

Azerbaijani Parliament Speaker Murtuz Alasgarov was equally melodramatic on 6 April when he declared that, “…if Turkey opens the border with Armenia, it will deal a blow not only to Azerbaijani-Turkish friendship but also to the entire Turkic world.”
Arrayed against these dire and suspect pronouncements are a plethora of facts that support the idea of rapprochement. According to Eurasianet.org,

“…the World Bank has estimated that the lifting of both the Azerbaijani and Turkish blockades could increase Armenia’s GDP by as much as 30-38 percent. The Turkish-Armenian Business Council has estimated that bilateral trade could reach $300 million per year with the lifting of the blockade.”

Currently, the author adds, Turkish-Armenian trade between the two states (estimated at roughly $70 million) must occur via neighboring Georgia and Iran. Ankara would like the Armenians to let bygones be bygones and “give up” their quest to gain worldwide support for the mass killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottomans from 1905-15. While that’s a long shot, there’s nothing like economic cheer to expedite international forgiveness. Certainly normalizing relations could not make them worse.

However, the government of Azerbaijan is not concerned with the economic well-being of Armenia or even with that of its great ally, Turkey. Its motivations are simple:

“…without Turkey, Azerbaij
an would be the only state maintaining a blockade of Armenia over Yerevan’s ongoing occupation of Azerbaijani territory captured during the Nagorno-Karabakh war. A decision to open Turkey’s borders with Armenia, Aliyev said, would leave Baku at a disadvantage in negotiating for the withdrawal of Armenian troops from Azerbaijani territory. ‘If Turkey were to open its doors to Armenia, Azerbaijan will lose an important lever in finding a solution to the conflict,’ the president told reporters on 24 March after returning from an official visit to Uzbekistan. ‘It also would make it impossible for us to continue the peace talks and would even bring the talks to an end.’”

So far the Turks have rushed to soothe every Azerbaijani temper tantrum. However, this has only estranged them from their own interests and has thus meant a certain sacrifice:

“…from the EU’s perspective, lifting the blockade of Armenia remains a key component of any program for change. A draft version of the European Parliament’s yearly report on the status of Turkey’s accession bid reportedly called on the country ‘to open the borders with Armenia, establish good-neighbor relations . . . and to give up any action impeding the reconciliation of the two countries.’”

As Turkey continues its committed quest towards EU membership, there will come a point when it will have to reconsider its unquestioning allegiance to Azerbaijan- one which is not particularly helpful and which has not been entirely respected by the latter party, either.

As time goes on, it will become increasingly clear that opening the border with Armenia is in Turkey’s own best interests- and for those of the region as well. It remains to be seen how much pressure will need to be exerted, and from what quarters, to prompt Ankara to make the switch- and let the chips fall where they may.