Today’s Zaman, Turkey
May 23 2009
Expert says Turkey’s influence will increase in Caucasus
Turkey’s influence in the Caucasus will increase if Turkish-Armenian
relations improve, but during the process of rapprochement, opposition
forces increasingly come to the forefront, Alexander Iskandaryan,
director of the Yerevan-based Caucasus Institute, has said.
`There is a zero-sum game logic. It is based on the idea that Armenia
would lose if Azerbaijan wins or Azerbaijan would lose if Armenia
wins. This is not a true logic. There is a need to leave such a
mentality out,’ he said, speaking to a group of Turkish journalists
this week. He added that even though Azerbaijani-Armenian relations
should be independent from Turkish-Armenian relations, this is not the
case in reality.
`In Turkish-Armenian relations, Azerbaijan is a third country. This
should be the basic principle. But we see that Azerbaijan has an
influence when it comes to Turkish-Armenian relations,’ Iskandaryan
said, in reference to recent concerns voiced by Azerbaijan and
Turkey’s response to them. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an
indicated in Baku last week that there would be no normalization in
ties with Armenia unless Armenia withdraws from the Nagorno-Karabakh
region. The statement pleased Azerbaijan but drew ire from Armenia,
which said Turkey should not interfere in the Nagorno-Karabakh issue
and warned that such moves by Ankara would harm efforts to resolve the
deep-seated dispute. Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in
a show of solidarity with Azerbaijan after Armenia invaded
Nagorno-Karabakh and seven regions adjacent to it. Armenian withdrawal
from Azerbaijani territory was a condition posed by Turkey for the
normalization of ties
with Yerevan, but the condition was apparently softened when Turkish
and Armenian diplomats started closed-door talks to normalize ties a
year and a half ago. Last month, they announced that they had reached
an agreement on the framework for restoring their ties, sparking
protest from Azerbaijan.
Asked who opposed an increase in Turkey’s influence in the Caucasus,
Iskandaryan said there are ultra-nationalists in both Armenia and
Turkey that opposed rapprochement. `There is also an Azerbaijani lobby
in Turkey. In Armenia, the elite and realistic people support
rapprochement,’ he said. `And the reason is simple: Turkey is 20
kilometers away, and there is no way to go there to drink a cup of
tea.’
He also said the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh would take a long time
to change but this was not going to be the case for the border between
Turkey and Armenia. `There is a unique situation. The United States
and Europe support the process. And Russia is against it. This was not
the case three, four years ago,’ he told the group of journalists, who
were in Armenia for the International Hrant Dink Foundation’s
Turkey-Armenia Journalist Dialogue Project, funded by the Heinrich
Böll Stiftung Association.
23 May 2009, Saturday
YONCA POYRAZ DOÄ?AN YEREVAN