LONG WAY TO GO ON KARABAKH SETTLEMENT – ANALYST
Aliyah Fridman

news.az
March 1 2010
Azerbaijan

Jeffrey Mankoff News.Az interviews Jeffrey Mankoff, associate director
of international security studies, Yale University.

What’s your view of the present state of negotiations on a peace
settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

There is still a long way to go. Turkey’s interest in achieving
rapprochement with Armenia means that for the time being the
Nagorno-Karabakh issue will be set aside. Attempting to incorporate
a deal on Nagorno-Karabakh into the discussions on opening the
Turkish-Armenian border and other kinds of limited steps would risk
collapsing the entire process. Without Armenian-Turkish reconciliation,
Yerevan seems unlikely to yield much on Nagorno-Karabakh. Another
uncertainty has to do with the political turmoil in Turkey connected to
the struggle between the AK Party government and the military. While
this struggle is under way, doing anything about Nagorno-Karabakh
could be politically dangerous for the Turkish government.

Do you believe that the sides to the conflict can solve the problem
during 2010?

Probably not, for the reasons outlined above.

What do you think about Russia’s efforts to play a dominating role
among the mediators on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

Given Russia’s role as a patron of Armenia, along with the mistrust
growing out of the conflict in Georgia, it seems unlikely Moscow could
succeed on its own as a mediator in the conflict. Russia obviously
has a role to play, but it will have to be in conjunction with other
outside powers including Turkey and the US/EU.

Do you think that normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations will
accelerate the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

If it succeeds, yes. But this normalization will take time. Many
Armenians (not to mention much of the Armenian diaspora) is dubious,
and if Turkey’s internal problems worsen, Ankara may well prove less
likely to take a risk on normalization with Armenia.

Armenians are stepping up their efforts towards recognition of
the Armenian genocide in the USA. Do you expect President Obama to
recognize the events in Ottoman Turkey as "genocide" in his traditional
speech on 24 April?

I doubt it. Obama is too cautious a politician and Turkey is too
important an ally. Another reason is that the threat of denouncing
the Armenian massacres as genocide gives Washington (and Tel Aviv,
which normally lobbies against calling the massacres genocide)
leverage with Turkey. Once they actually play the genocide card, that
leverage evaporates. Both the US and Israel are eager to reinforce
the Turkish-Israeli alliance right now, and using the word "genocide"
would make that aim much more difficult to achieve.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress