The war in South Ossetia forced the world to come to grips with new political developments in the south Caucasus. Allies and enemies of Russia alike had the possibility to cull lessons from that war. It appears that neighboring Turkey culled the greatest lesson.

The speed with which Turkey reacted to unfolding developments in the region showed just how vulnerable Ankara’s geo-political positions are in the Caucasus.

Cutting his vacation short, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan first traveled to Moscow and later to Tbilisi and Baku. In Russia, this unusual diplomatic activity on the part of the Turkish Prime Minister was viewed as a desperate attempt to correct the weakening Turkish position resulting from the Caucasian crisis and to find ways to defend its national interests in a new geo-political state of affairs.

It is known that the British Petroleum company decided to shut down the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzerum pipelines as well as the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline for as long as tensions continue in the region. The war laid bare the vulnerability of these military strategic projects directed to the West.

While in Moscow Erdogan came forth with an initiative to create a Caucasian Platform of Stability and Cooperation which would encompass Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. The essential aim of the Platform would be the establishment of peace and security in the region by means of cooperation. As Erdogan noted in Baku, this Platform must first and foremost be established on a geographical factor, that it should set as its objective regional peace and security and that it must include economic cooperation and energy security issues. In the words of the Turkish Prime Minister, the Platform must be established on the principles of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Turkey’s eastern policy is threatened

The unforeseen developments in the southern Caucasus, in actuality, dealt a serious blow to Turkey’s national interests. In recent years, Turkish foreign policy directed towards the East, in terms of establishing its influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia) where placed on the back-burner and all its energies were focused on the process of obtaining membership in the European Union. Turkey was much more active in terms of its eastern policy at the start of the 1990’s when Ankara set on a course to lead the newly independent Turkic-speaking states after the collapse of the Soviet Union, while at the same time representing the interests of Washington in the region. This foreign policy course by Turkey failed however due to a set of internal and external factors which prompted Washington to decide to actively involve itself in the regional processes. Even after this, Turkey did not give up on its ambitions to become a regional superpower and intended to become even more active, especially if Europe didn’t accept Ankara into its family. As history shows, in all those cases when the doors of Europe were closed before Turkey, Ankara directed its sights on the East, seeking to compensate its failures on the European front with an expanded influence in the peoples and countries located in the East. Thus, as a result of the Georgian-South Ossetian war, when the competing interests of Moscow and Washington have reached a point of collision, the eastern (reserve) policy of Ankara faces serious challenges and threatens to leave Turkey without any spheres of influence. Given that Ankara fully understands that it must come to terms with the Russian factor in terms of the former Soviet territories, Turkey has decided to cooperate with its longtime competitor, Russia. In actuality, the speedy initiative of Turkey’s Prime Minister is nothing more than a proposal to divide influence in the Caucasus between Turkey and Russia and by excluding the other traditional regional players, Washington, Brussels and Tehran. By taking such a step, Turkey resolves several problems all at once. This initiative affords Turkey the possibility to play a larger role in regional processes. Turkey also is handed the possibility to restore the role it played for the West as NATO’s eastern arm, something it had lost as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union. A greater degree of Turkey’s involvement in a region adjacent to Europe, whose instability threatens the security of Europe, increases the importance of Turkey in the eyes of Brussels. In the end, cooperation with Russia to a certain degree safeguards the inviolability of the pipelines leading to the West. In this way, Ankara not only restores its position in the Caucasus, and in Central Asia in the future given its long-term plan, but assumes the role of mediator in relations between Russia and the West, something that incomparably heightens the latter’s dependency on Turkey.

Peace and stability in the Caucasus without Matthew Bryza

Matthew Bryza, the United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs confessed that he was taken by surprise by the Turkish initiative to create a so-called security alliance in the Caucasus. Bryza has said that, “They never warned me about this.” President Abdullah Gul of Turkey, in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian, declared that developments in Georgia exposed the inability of the United States to determine global politics. Gul concluded that, “The time has come when the United States must share power in the world with other nations.” Underlining the fact that the United States can no longer oversee the entire world from a single center, the Turkish President suggested to work together. “We must create new world systems”, the President noted. Azeri political scientist Rasim Musabekov considers this notion of Erdogan’s, that the countries of the region, Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia can come to an understanding in the South Caucasus without the participation  of the United States and Europe, to be unrealistic since it is essentially impossible not to take the interests of the West into account. The Turkish press, for its part, notes that it is also impossible not to factor Iran into the equation given that it too has regional interests and that in a certain sense it can also be considered a Caucasian state.

While recently in Baku, the Turkish head of government declared that, “For the past 16 years no results have been forthcoming from the activities of the Minsk Group, a fact that forces us to think. The Caucasian Peace and Stability Platform can contribute to the work leading to the establishment of peace and stability in the region.” The Turkish Prime Minister is convinced that his proposed platform will afford the possibility to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. However, Ankara’s position on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remains the same. Erdogan is of the belief that the creation of a Caucasian alliance will lead to a resolution of conflicts in the Caucasus based on the principles set forth in the 1921 Treaty of Kars signed between Russia and Turkey. It is well known that the Treaty of Kars delineated the present de jure borders, handing over Nakhijevan and Nagorno-Karabkh to Azerbaijan.

The idea of creating a variety of cooperative formats with the participation of Caucasian regional states surfaced as early as the beginning of the 1990’s. The leaders of the regional states, as well as interested powers outside the region, have frequently broached the concepts of a Caucasian House, Common House, a Caucasian Stability Pact and Peace in the Caucasus. This recent initiative of the Turkish Prime Minister is quite similar to that proposed by the former President of Turkey Suleiman Demirel. During an official visit to Georgia on January 15, 2000, the then Turkish President Demirel came out with an initiative regarding a Stability Pact for the Caucasus that would serve as a multi-party forum to be directed along OSCE principles. All these initiatives, however, whose main objective was to overcome the contradictions existing in the region through cooperative means, were impossible to implement due to those very contradictions. Between the years 1918-1920, during the short-lived independence of the three republics of the Trans-Caucasus, there was another attempt to establish a Tanscaucasian Confederation. Then too, this attempt at creating a Caucasian unified entity failed due to mutually conflicting interests. If both Georgia and Azerbaijan saw the threat to their independence as emanating from the north, i.e. Russia, for Armenia, the threat came from Turkey. The failed attempts for a union of the Caucasus prompt us to ask a most important question – This time around what will assist in the formation of a Caucasian union?

The Pipeline for Peace Theory

It is the conviction of Erdogan that stable peace and security in the Caucasus is possible through the deepening of economic cooperation amongst the regional states. As the best illustrations of economic undertakings that have supported regional peace and security he points to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Baku-Tbilisi-Erzerum and Baku-Tbilisi-Kars projects. In this manner Erdogan implies that the diversification of energy pipelines in the region is the backbone of his proposed platform. Based on the statements of Erdogan, Caucasian regional affairs expert Gyuner Ozcan, who works at The International Strategic Research Organization in Ankara, concludes that if Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Armenia take advantage of large-scale economic projects such as energy pipelines or railways, either now existing or in the planning stage, that ethno-regional wars, the most serious problems to regional security, can either be averted or resolved once and for all. The Turkish expert recounts that in 1995 John Maresca, a United States negotiator in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement process, expressed the opinion that if the Baku-Ceyhan peace pipeline were to stretch across the territories of Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia this would encourage Armenian political leaders to make capital investments in it and to get involved in sincere attempts to settle the conflict. As the Turkish expert notes, the proposed peace pipeline could have similarly resolved issues between Turkey and Armenia that exist till today and would have afforded the two countries the possibility to put their political and economic relations in order. If Erdogan’s pronouncements are sincere and Ankara actually desires to initiate regional economic cooperation, by opening its doors to Armenia as well, then this would be a complete reversal of Ankara’s 16 year-long policy regarding Yerevan. We are all aware that till today both Turkey and Azerbaijan have implemented a continuous policy of isolating Armenia; they view the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue and backing-down on the recognition of the Genocide as preconditions. Now, in essence, Ankara is implying that it is ready to include Armenia in regional economic projects, as a precondition for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue.

Even though after his visits to Tbilisi and Baku Erdogan declared that he had received a positive response to his proposal, analysts however are of the opinion that that Moscow and Tbilisi, Yerevan and Baku, will not negotiate with one another regarding this concept. In any case, those who can actually cull some advantage from this initiative, albeit an unrealistic one, are Yerevan and Moscow. As Erdogan pointed out, he plans to implement negotiations with Armenia as well. President Serzh Sargsyan, as early as his trip to Moscow, invited Turkish President Abdullah Gul to Armenia, to watch the September 6th Armenia-Turkey football match together. After the proposal made by the Turkish Prime Minister, the question voiced in the Armenian and Turkish press in the past as to whether Gul will really come to Armenia, assumes a more urgent and up to date tone. Vardan Oskanian, the former Foreign Minister of Armenia, in his article entitled “The Caucasus Moment” that appeared in the August 24th edition of the International Herald Tribune, considers the Turkish Prime Minister’s proposal to be of interest and adds that the concept needs to be formulated and implemented correctly. At the same time the former Foreign Minister notes that the football match soon to take place between the national teams of the two countries is an opportune time for the two neighbors to discuss common security challenges and to pave the way for the establishment of peace in the region. Voices in the Turkish press have also called for dialogue. These voices argue that Ankara must accept the invitation, if not by the President himself then at least by an official on the Foreign Ministry level. Many will agree that the normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations will bring a great measure of peace and stability to the Caucasus then all the efforts, sincere but unrealistic as they are, to resolve all outstanding issues at once. As reality shows, the moment for each state in the region is different, but that the normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations can be situated alongside those issues whose resolution can actually herald the “Caucasus Moment”.