Hurriyet Daily News , Turkey
Oct 23 2009
Will the Armenia-Turkey drama have a happy ending?
Friday, October 23, 2009
By Mansur Aslanov
If the extent of public confusion is adopted as a measure of success,
then the Armenia-Turkey conversation clearly qualifies, based on the
contradictory and conflicting statements coming from both the Armenian
and Turkish leaders.
The most recent major episode in this saga was Armenian President
Sarkisian’s visit to Bursa for a soccer game between the two countries
last week. Absurdity abounded: The two presidents sat together on
Swarovski-encrusted thrones, while Turkish nationalists plottedd to
fly into the stadium on a hang glider with an Azerbaijani flag as a
reaction to the flag being banned from the game. The founders of the
first Azerbaijan republic of 1918-1920 protected the flag of Turkey
throughout Soviet rule, while in the game with Armenia, an Azerbaijani
flag was trampled on the ground by the Turkish police after protestors
were caught trying to smuggle it in. The image naturally provoked
outrage in Azerbaijan.
Ankara’s openness to talking with the Armenians is a welcome change,
which reflects new confidence and maturity of Turkish society.
However, this is being coupled with naïveté in Ankara’s regional
policies. Most likely, this reflects a slightly superficial and
abstract vision of foreign policy colored by ideological stereotypes
and, as a result, a failure to see that practice doesn’t always live
up to theoretical constructs.
The consequences are already visible: the frosty response from Baku,
the growing tension in the region and rapidly fading hopes for
expanding the strategic East-West natural-gas corridor. Opening the
border between Armenia and Turkey at this time is not worth these
consequences. Right now, opening the border between Turkey and Armenia
would just move a sealed border further east by some hundred
kilometers at the expense of alienating Azerbaijan, further weakening
Georgia and cutting off strategic access to Central Asia. This is a
good deal for Moscow, which controls much of Armenia’s economy and for
whom the country has long become a burden in search of a new sponsor.
For Ankara, this doesn’t look that appealing. Turkey is, at the
moment, spending credit from the past, when Azerbaijan and Georgia saw
Turkey as a more predictable and less haphazard partner. Ironically,
Turkey’s strategic value was greatly boosted by the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Caspian gas pipelines, whereas today the
policy Turkey is pursuing is at odds with the policy that paved the
way for Ankara’s success and strength.
This goes to the emerging pattern of stereotypes and naïveté in
foreign policy. Being inclusive of Turkey’s own Muslim identity
doesn’t necessarily require one to immediately bash Israel and playing
nice to Moscow shouldn’t mean turning a cold shoulder on another
traditionally friendly neighbor, Georgia. Inviting the Armenian
President to a soccer match and instigating the necessary and overdue
discussion of Anatolia’s convoluted history certainly should not come
with the price tag of insulting and striking a blow to the interests
of fraternal Azerbaijan.
A pattern of contradictions and naïveté is emerging in Turkey’s
foreign policy. Why would Turkey express its emotionally charged
disapproval over the tragic events in Gaza, which do truly deserve
condemnation, while so warmly welcoming Serj Sarkisian, who confessed
publicly to his participation in the Khojaly massacre? By the way,
while Gaza is still populated by Palestinians and led by Hamas, no
Azerbaijanis live in Khojaly or on any Azerbaijani territories
occupied by Armenian forces.
For Mr. Sarkisian, this is partly a quest for legitimizing his own
rule, marred by unprecedented post-election violence last year in
Yerevan, when at least 10 protesters were shot point-blank by security
forces. He finally received the coveted Obama phone call and was
clearly treated better in Turkey than anywhere else in the world,
including Armenia and Russia. Of course, Mr. Sarkisian can be
negotiated with and even attend soccer games. However, the image of
Turkish hospitality was an overstep, which raised the question of
whether Turkey is trying to irritate Azerbaijan as a tactic so that
Baku’s frustrated response can in turn justify the ratification of the
protocols with Armenia, without any progress on the Nagorno-Karabakh
talks. If so, it would be a short-sighted tactic. In one lesson of
history, in 1938, then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
signed an agreement condoning Hitler’s occupation of Czechoslovakia,
hoping for peace; instead, he just paved a way for a greater war. The
real issues of occupation and aggression won’t go away simply because
it is convenient at the moment to ignore them.
For every country, mistakenly projecting domestic perceptions or
ideology onto actual foreign policy decisions is ultimately costly. As
the Russians, Iranians, and others have learned, the Caucasus is not a
playground for testing abstract theories, but an actual and vital
global strategic hub. Turkey can and should play this round very
wisely to succeed. However, the visible overconfidence, misreading the
magnitude of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue for Azerbaijan and the actual
threat it poses to the region, and the lack of a rational cost-benefit
analysis of trading Azerbaijan for Armenia in Turkey’s national
interests, as well as surprising obliviousness to the significance of
Azerbaijan’s national flag to the public sentiment, are just a few of
the clear warning signs pointing to Ankara’s potential lack of the
preparedness for the high-stakes game it is attempting to play.
*Mansur Aslanov is a free-lance writer based in Baku, Azerbaijan.
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