It is absurd to exclude Azerbaijan from South Caucasian strategy

The dead end in Azerbaijani-Armenian negotiations caused by Armenian deconstructive stubbornness is accompanied by reintroduction of the ill-fated Zurich protocols to the Turkish Parliament along with other 166 delayed bills.  The media interpreted this act as a reconciliation gesture of Ankara towards Yerevan, even though the ratification doesn’t promise to be swift.

The problem of Turkish-Armenian relations is a matter of direct concern not only for these two countries. Washington and Brussels mediated the protocols, while Moscow and Baku tried to hamper the process (the former, though, didn’t do it openly). The WikiLeaks publication of diplomatic cables of the US Embassy on Yerevan makes US agenda a bit more clear, even though the objectivity of the material can be doubted: the issues of Armenian presidential elections, the Zurich protocols and the Nagorno-Karabakh problem appear to be tightly connected.

According to WikiLaeks materials, Armenian presidential elections results were falsified. Serge Sarksyan won only 8 or 14% of the votes, instead of 52.82% announced by the election committee. As for Ter-Petrosyan, he won 30-35% instead of announced 21.5. It is possible that the scale of falsification was even larger. Anyway, a second round should have been announced, but it was not. Even the pressure exercised by Robert Kocharyan’s representatives to prevent Levon Ter-Petrosyan from filing a complaint with the Constitution Court didn’t stop the US from recognizing Sarksyan.

As we can see, Washington betrayed its theoretical affection towards ‘democratic ideals’ for pragmatic geopolitics. The US preferred Sarksyan because he seemed to have favored the thaw in relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan more that other candidates, which perfectly corresponded to the US interests in the region. Washington wanted to use the process of Armenian-Turkish reconciliation as a factor in Nagorno-Karabakh settlement.

Inspired by this support and a series of successes Sarksyan made Armenian’s position event less constructive. According to WikiLeaks information, Sarksyan was reday to sign the order to remove troops from zones bordering on Karabakh when the Armenian-Turkish protocols were signed and ha abandoned the idea.

When Turkey’s government, faced with harsh response from Baku and unpopularity of Zurich protocols, froze their ratification process by conditioning them with Nagorno-Karabakh progress, Serge Sarksyan found himself in a difficult situation. No he had to insist on his uncompromising decisions no matter what and had no potential to really resolve the problem. Therefore, the false order of conflicts’ regulation chosen by Washington resulted in a dead end in both Turkish-Armenian reconciliation and Nagorno-Karabakh peace process. So it became clear that it is absurd to exclude Azerbaijan from South Caucasian strategy, while confronting Azerbaijan is even more absurd

The considerable role of US diplomacy is undeniable, but it is a mistake to think that Turkey was totally dependent on it. For example, Turkey doesn’t hesitate to go against the US as far as its relations with Israel are concerned. So why is Ankara more compassionate towards the Palestinians than the Azerbaijani refugees? Why isn’t it afraid of military powerful Israel backed by the USA and at the same time is stopped by week Armenia backed only by Russia? Azerbaijani government can’t help but ask itself these questions. If we take the nature of Turkish-Azerbaijani relations into account, we will see that any misunderstandings between the two strategic partners are quite undesirable.

There is no reason to suspect the Turkish government of insincerity towards the fraternal nation when it promises to keep its border with Armenia closed until the latter decides to compromise in the Nagorno-Karabakh question. And the Erdogan’s walkout of Sarksyan’s speech during the UN General Assembly session confirms it. However, there’s more to strategic cooperation, even between two brotherly people, than gestures and words, and Turkey shouldn’t forget it.

Musabekov Rasim, political expert and member of International Relations Committee of the Azerbaijani Parliament.