TO BREAK STALEMATE WITH ARMENIA TURKEY SHOULD RESOLVE NAGORNO-KARABAKH CONFLICT
Today’s Zaman (Turkey)
November 10, 2013 Sunday
If Turkey wants to ease the current stalemate with Armenia, it should
work with Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia to begin to find a solution
to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, says prominent American-Armenian
scholar Ronald Grigor Suny from Michigan University.
“Nagorno-Karabakh is the nut. It is a very difficult problem that
prevents them from reaching an agreement and I understand why it
is difficult for both Armenia and Azerbaijan to actually solve the
problem,” Suny said in a special interview with Sunday’s Zaman.
The fact that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan
and Armenia, Turkey’s neighbors to the east, remains unresolved is
considered to be a potential threat to stability in the region.
Nagorno-Karabakh is an ethnic Armenian-majority enclave inside
Azerbaijan over which Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a
deadly conflict for more than two decades. The conflict escalated into
a full-scale war in the early 1990s when Armenian-backed forces under
the command of current Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan occupied 20
percent of Azerbaijani territories, including Nagorno-Karabakh, killing
some 30,000 people. Hundreds of thousands fled their homes before a
cease-fire was signed in 1994, although there is still no peace treaty.
Mentioning a proposal he made few years ago to the governments of both
Armenia and Azerbaijan and which was later published in the Middle East
Journal, Suny thinks that there is another way to solve this issue.
According to Suny’s proposal, which was not accepted by either
side when presented to them, Nagorno-Karabakh should de-jure
remain in Azerbaijan and be recognized as an official part of the
territory of Azerbaijan, which is the accepted position according to
international law. But at the same time, he says that it should be
de-facto recognized as a special area with absolutely full autonomy
which will be run and governed by the people of that region.
In the last census conducted during the Soviet time in late 1980s,
at least 78 percent of population in Nagorno-Karabakh was Armenian.
Today, Nagorno-Karabakh is fully populated by ethnic Armenians while
neighboring provinces occupied by Armenia are largely empty.
The proposal, as Suny noted, also included a provision that the
Azerbaijanis forced to leave Nagorno-Karabakh should be allowed
to return.
“But nobody liked this proposal. Armenia did not like it, as it meant
that Nagorno-Karabakh would remain within Azerbaijan and Azerbaijanis
did not like that it gave full autonomy and self-governance to
Armenians,” Suny said. He added that many people in the former Soviet
Union are afraid of autonomy and federalism because of what happened
in the former Soviet Union, since it led to the collapse.
“Now we have lived for over 20 years with this frozen conflict. The
outcome is that Nagorno-Karabakh became Armenian. It is run by
Armenians and it was rebuilt by Armenians. They don’t want to give it
up, they are afraid of losing, as Armenia is a very small country. All
of these factors are part of their national ethnic consciousness. For
Azerbaijanis, too, it is difficult to give up Nagorno-Karabakh. It is
their “black garden,” it is a very beautiful part of their country
and many people from Baku have summer homes there — 25 percent
of population of Nagorno-Karabakh was Azerbaijani, etc. So it is a
very difficult situation. My view is that our proposal won’t work,
because nobody wants it,” Suny says, adding, however, that there are
alternative ways to resolve the issue. Talking about his “new and
better” way of thinking, Suny said he has even discussed this with
intellectuals in Washington that perhaps we should think about the
whole region from Russia through the Caucasus into Turkey and even
to the Middle East as one grand region in which different cultures
come together without confrontation.
“National territory is less important. The economy, a flow of culture
and migration, these are more important and this is the only long
term solution to the impossible problem of today,” Suny notes.
Solution to Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
The Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE) has been striving to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,
a territorial dispute between Baku and Yerevan, for 21 years; however,
no conclusive results have yet been achieved, making the Minsk Group
a failure and an institution with an unfinished mission.
Suny says the conflict is still not resolved because, “Real people
have a real interest in not solving the problem.”
“There are people in Nagorno-Karabakh who think, ‘We are doing OK,
we are rebuilding Nagorno-Karabakh, anyway it is already Armenian,
so why change it.’ People in Yerevan [the capital city of Armenia],
including the leadership, which comes from Nagorno-Karabakh, also
think that way. Azerbaijan is building a new country. You can see
the booming economy and so again, people think, ‘We are doing fine,
there’s no need to start a war,'” Suny added.
Talking about how to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Suny
said that both sides must keep talking and not turn their backs on
negotiation. He suggested bringing regional powers such as Turkey
and Russia and, as a global power, the US, into the discussions
that he thinks should be happening. Suny says that the solution
to this decades-long conflict lies in the step by step settlement
and resolution of small problems that exist, like opening borders,
which would make it easier to move between the countries and develop
economic ties.
“Don’t worry so much about the ultimate solution. It is difficult to
know what will happen to Nagorno-Karabakh in the future, it may become
less important. If borders are open and people are moving and trading,
then is it that important who is actually sovereign, or where the
borders are between Armenia, Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh? Maybe
not,” Suny said. He added, “I say yavas- yavas [slowly in Azerbaijani],
kamats-kamats [slowly in Armenian], you go and try step by step to
solve small problems that will keep people from killing each other.”
Often described as “frozen,” the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict nevertheless
is frequently on the verge of becoming a renewed war.
Skirmishes that could rage out of control pose a significant
risk of turning the so-called ceasefire into a full-fledged war,
more so than a deliberate attack by either side. Hundreds, often
thousands of ceasefire violations happen each month and dozens are
killed and injured every year, according to a report released by the
International Crisis Group (ICG) on Sept. 26. The report underlines
that the most serious skirmishes over the past year have taken place
far from Nagorno-Karabakh or the occupied territories. In July 2013,
for example, firefights twice forced the closure of a road connecting
Armenia to Georgia and in August, there were skirmishes along the
hitherto mostly quiet border of Nakhichevan, an exclave separated
from the rest of Azerbaijan by Iran, Armenia and Turkey.
Urging both sides to re-educate people, Suny says that what
intellectuals should do is to think more positively about the other
side.
“At the moment when I read press from both Armenia and Azerbaijan I
only see talk of how evil the other side is. They are terrible, they
are not human beings; that is not going to help at all, and so on,”
Suny said. He added: “Intellectuals in these countries are serving
national purposes rather than educating the people in a new way. And
when someone tries to do it in a new way they are either repressed
or heavily condemned.”
‘Russia is central’
Russia is a very important part of the settlement of the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Suny says; however, at the moment, Russia
has no great incentive to try to solve the issue, he adds.
The South Caucasus, a region of considerable geostrategic importance at
the crossroads between East and West, was always seen by its northern
neighbor, Russia, as its backyard and Russia has always been able
to remain the most influential player in the region, particularly in
economic and military terms. None of the countries of the region —
Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia – can be the caption of its soul.
“After the 2008 war with Georgia, Russia demonstrated that it is the
principle player in the South Caucasus, no question. Russia is back
and there is no solution to the Abkhazia or South Ossetia, or the
Nagorno-Karabakh problem without Russia,” Suny said.
In August 2008, provoked by Georgian military operation, Russia
deepened its occupation in northern separatist region of South Ossetia,
and bombed Georgian towns in a major escalation of a conflict that
has left dozens of civilians dead and wounded. As a result, Tbilisi,
although supported by its staunch ally the US during the war and
later on, lost control of the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
which were later recognized as independent states by Russia.
Suny says the same goes for the Nagorno-Karabakh problem, as Russia
uses it as a lever in the region. “They may sell arms to Azerbaijan
while remaining very close allies with Armenians. They can play this
role,” Suny said.
But Turkey could also play a very dynamic and positive role in the
South Caucasus, as Turkey has influence with its friend and ally
Azerbaijan, according to Suny. He thinks that Turkey and Armenia
miscalculated their rapprochement policy started in late 2009,
initiated by Turkey’s soccer diplomacy and ended with the failure
to ratify the Zurich agreement that aimed to reestablish diplomatic
relations between Turkey and Armenia due to outstanding political
and moral issues that keep two sides apart.
“One issue is the relationship with Azerbaijan and the question of
Nagorno-Karabakh. The fact that the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute is a
frozen conflict is clearly a big problem for Azerbaijan, as well as
the occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and other parts of Azerbaijan
by Armenians. Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani lobby want to keep
Turkey from getting closer to Armenia. On the other side, it is very
important to Armenia to maintain Armenian control and sovereignty over
Nagorno-Karabakh and to have some kind of official recognition of the
events of 1915 as a genocide. So even though it would be good to open
borders, both sides have an interest in preventing reconciliation.”
Relations with Azerbaijan are the backbone of Turkey’s Caucasus policy
and solidarity between the two nations is considerably robust. In
1993, during the Nagorno Karabakh war, Turkey closed its land border
with Armenia to support its ally, Azerbaijan. Despite the efforts of
international powers and civil society to help both sides reopen the
borders since then, there has been no improvement; Turkey and Armenia
have failed to approve the twin protocols signed in Zurich on Oct. 10,
2009. Turkey insisted that Armenia settle its dispute with Azerbaijan
as a precondition to the ratifying the Zurich protocols, even though
the protocols did not refer to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Currently, Ankara and Baku have followed a policy of attempting to
economically isolate Armenia by omitting Yerevan from regional economic
projects, considering it a major incentive to reaching an agreement
on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict of more than two decades peacefully.
From: A. Papazian