The Economist
May 2, 2009
U.S. Edition

Mountain chess: Turkey and Armenia

Can Turkey and Armenia ever make up?

Recent moves towards a peace deal may come unstuck

A HIGH-STAKES chess game is being played out in the south Caucasus. It
involves America, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Turkey. Unlike
chess-players, though, all the participants can win in this game, it
is hoped, if they agree on a common aim: peace between Turkey and
Armenia, which would help to thaw the frozen conflict between Armenia
and Azerbaijan over the (mainly Armenian) territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

It almost seemed possible on April 23rd, when Turkey and Armenia
declared that they had agreed on a "road map" to establish formal ties
and reopen the border. This was sealed by Turkey in 1993 to show
solidarity with Azerbaijan, which had just lost 20% of its territory,
including Nagorno-Karabakh. If the border were open, Armenians could
then climb their sacred Mount Ararat. Friendship with Armenia might
give Turkey the muscle to push through a deal on Karabakh, as well as
securing it a bigger role in the south Caucasus. And that would give
Turkey’s friends a fresh reason to promote Turkish membership of the
European Union.

The most immediate benefit, though, was meant to be dissuading Barack
Obama from keeping his campaign promise to call the mass slaughter of
Ottoman Armenians in 1915 "genocide". In the statement he issued on
April 24th, the day when the world’s Armenians commemorate the
tragedy, the American president tried to please everybody. He plumped
for "medz yeghern", Armenian for "great catastrophe". (Cynics noted
that the Turkish- Armenian deal, though initialled a month ago, had
been announced only a day earlier.) And he praised Turkey’s and
Armenia’s peacemaking efforts. Hardliners in Armenia and the diaspora
were furious, accusing Mr Obama of reneging on his promise. Yet in
Turkey the opposition complained that he had simply swapped Armenian
for English to say the same thing.

A bigger obstacle to a deal may be Azerbaijan. It is threatening to
turn towards Russia and to increase the price of the natural gas it
sells to Turkey. This may explain why the Turkish prime minister,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has reverted to the traditional line that,
unless Armenia makes peace with Azerbaijan, Turkey will not make peace
with Armenia’even though the text they initialled reportedly does not
mention Nagorno-Karabakh at all.

Some say he is posturing, to force Armenia to withdraw from some of
the seven regions of Azerbaijan that it occupies outside
Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliev, and his
Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sargsyan, are due to meet in Prague next
week, before an EU eastern-partnership summit. But Mr Sargsyan, whose
image was marred by a disputed presidential election in April 2008, is
unlikely to bend further. One admittedly puny coalition partner has
already walked out over the deal with Turkey. The financial crisis is
starting to bite, too. Armenian migrant labourers are returning from
Russia in droves. Oil and gas prices have shot up. The Armenian dram
has lost over a third of its value against the dollar.

The real spoiler may turn out to be Russia. Armenia is the only
country bordering Turkey, a NATO member, in which the Russians have
troops and a base. Peace with Turkey could lead to their withdrawal,
as Armenia leans westward. The trade-off, say some, could be for
Russian peacekeepers to defend the corridor linking Armenia proper to
Nagorno-Karabakh. But Russia is also said to be bullying Azerbaijan
for more gas. If it gets it, that may kill the planned Nabucco
pipeline to carry Central Asian and Azerbaijani gas to Europe via
Turkey, leaving Europe more dependent on Russia for its energy.