Tbilisi's nameless airport

Prime Minister of Georgia Irakli Garibashvili spoke at a session of the government about the entirely expected initiative to name Tbilisi International Airport in honor of Shota Rustaveli. It was expected because the nameless airport, which is the main one in the country, has been raising more and more questions and looking strange.

For more than 25 years Georgia has been an independent state, but Tbilisi International Airport has no name. In official documents it is called 'The Airport in Alexeyevka', according to the name of the village which is situated there.

Of course, if the main air gateway should be named, the name should be significant. At least for Georgians. There is no more significant name in Georgia than the name of the great medieval poet who praised Oriental knighthood in the poem 'The Knight in the Panther's Skin'. The airport of Rome is called Leonardo de Vinci, for example.

At the same time, in France the main airport is named after Charles de Gaulle, who wasn’t an artist or a poet, but a politician. And Georgian politicians immediately supported 'a guild fellow'. Some political parties supported the idea of naming Tbilisi's airport after the first president of the country Zviad Gamsakhurdia. For them, Gamsakhurdia Airport sounds no worse than Rustaveli Airport. Supporters of the president, who declared the independence of the country in 1991, had been suggesting the initiative many times. They raised the question in the 1990s. However, Georgia's second president Edward Shevardnadze didn’t allow this – not because he didn’t found the predecessor a worthy person, but for a more important reason. The name of Zviad Gamsakhurdia is connected with the civil war of 1991-1993. The wounds of the war are still fresh for society even today. Moreover, during the rule of Gamsakhurdia, an armed conflict over South Ossetia started, which was frozen by Russian peacemakers in 1992 (after the military overthrow of the first president) till 2004, when Mikheil Saakashvili started it again. It is difficult to argue that the seeds of the five-day war were not sown 25 years ago. That’s why naming the airport after such an ambiguous politician could be accepted as a provocation.

However, there is another reason why the process of naming the airport faced problems. The point is that according to the tradition of international air traffic control, the naming or renaming of an airport cannot be held on a unilateral basis by the state which owns the airport. The traditional name of the airport in Alexeyevka is mentioned in numerous papers and electronic documents which regulate air traffic between Tbilisi and other cities of the world. Naming will demand urgent changes to thousands of websites (including professional and special ones), as well as to the international system of status information exchange. It is impossible to carry out this work without broad involvement of international partners and serious expenditure.

However, Premier Garibashvili seems to be ready to initiate such work to write “Shota Rustaveli Airport” over the main terminal. Thus, the main obstacle is the political background and resistance of the forces which are dreaming about the entrenchment of Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s name. It is impossible to dissuade them. Therefore, the authorities should make firm decisions. Whether the 33-year old Premier will take the risky step in the circumstances of a worsening political situation or not, time will tell.

At least, if his initiative ends with nothing, it will also be a result. A bad result for the ruling coalition of Georgian Dream. The authorities would ignore “the golden rule” of politics: one should never make promises which obviously cannot be fulfilled.