TURKEY AND THE CAUCASUS

The Economist
Aug 21st 2008

Waiting and watching

A large NATO country ponders a bigger role in the Caucasus

Erdogan plays the Georgian flagAT THE Hrazdan stadium in Yerevan,
workers are furiously preparing for a special visitor: Turkey’s
president, Abdullah Gul. Armenia’s president, Serzh Sarkisian, has
invited Mr Gul to a football World Cup qualifier between Turkey and
its traditional foe, Armenia, on September 6th.

If he comes, Mr Gul may pave the way for a new era in the
Caucasus. Turkey is the only NATO member in the area, and after the
war in Georgia it would like a bigger role. It is the main outlet
for westbound Azeri oil and gas and it controls the Bosporus and
Dardanelles, through which Russia and other Black Sea countries ship
most of their trade. And it has vocal if small minorities from all
over the region, including Abkhaz and Ossetians.

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has just been to
Moscow and Tbilisi to promote a "Caucasus Stability and Co-operation
Platform", a scheme that calls for new methods of crisis management
and conflict resolution. The Russians and Georgians made a show of
embracing the idea, as have Armenia and Azerbaijan, but few believe
that it will go anywhere. That is chiefly because Turkey does not have
formal ties with Armenia. In 1993 Turkey seal ed its border (though not
its air links) with its tiny neighbour after Armenia occupied a chunk
of Azerbaijan in a war over Nagorno-Karabakh. But the war in Georgia
raises new questions over the wisdom of maintaining a frozen border.

Landlocked and poor, Armenia looks highly vulnerable. Most of its
fuel and much of its grain comes through Georgia’s Black Sea ports,
which have been paralysed by the war. Russia blew up a key rail bridge
this week, wrecking Georgia’s main rail network that also runs to
Armenia and Azerbaijan. This disrupted Azerbaijan’s oil exports,
already hit by an explosion earlier this month in the Turkish part
of the pipeline from Baku to Ceyhan, in Turkey.

"All of this should point in one direction," says a Western diplomat
in Yerevan: "peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan." Reconciliation
with Armenia would give Azerbaijan an alternative export route for
its oil and Armenia the promise of a new lifeline via Turkey. Some
Armenians gloat that Russia’s invasion of Georgia kyboshes the chances
of Azerbaijan ever retaking Nagorno-Karabakh by force, though others
say the two cases are quite different. Russia is not contiguous with
Nagorno-Karabakh, nor does it have "peacekeepers" or nationals there.

Even before the Georgian war, Turkey seemed to understand that
isolating Armenia is not making it give up the parts of Azerbaijan that
it occupies out side Nagorno-Karabakh. But talking to it might. Indeed,
that is what Turkish and Armenian diplomats have secretly done for
some months, until news of the talks leaked (probably from an angry
Azerbaijan).

Turkey’s ethnic and religious ties with its Azeri cousins have long
weighed heavily in its Caucasus policy. But there is a new worry that a
resolution calling the mass slaughter of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks
in the 1915 genocide may be passed by America’s Congress after this
November’s American elections. This would wreck Turkey’s relations with
the United States. If Turkey and Armenia could only become friendlier
beforehand, the resolution might then be struck down for good.

In exchange for better relations, Turkey wants Armenia to stop backing
a campaign by its diaspora for genocide recognition and allow a
commission of historians to establish "the truth". Mr Sarkisian has
hinted that he is open to this idea, triggering howls of treason
from the opposition. The biggest obstacle remains Azerbaijan and
its allies in the Turkish army. Mr Erdogan was expected to try to
square Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliev, in a visit to Baku this
week. Should he fail, Mr Gul may not attend the football match–and
a chance for reconciliation may be lost.