2013 ELECTIONS: ARMENIA’S GEOPOLITICAL FUTURE AND PROSPECTS FOR DEMOCRACY, ,” HARVARD INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
By Armen Ayvazyan | April 15, 2013 | 12:00 AM
2013 (Re)Election Results in Armenia
Since regaining independence in 1991, Armenia’s presidential elections
have been marred by fraud, while the incumbent political authorities
have consistently been able to reestablish themselves.
Massive post-election protests took place after the presidential
elections in 1996, 2003, and 2008. In 2013, the country found
itself in a similar situation. With over 58 percent of the votes,
the incumbent, President Serzh Sargsyan, was declared the winner,
while Raffi Hovannisian, the leader of the Heritage Party, received
about 37 percent of the vote.
Unique to the 2013 elections was that they were likely manipulated
before the formal start of the campaign, as all major opposition
political parties ultimately sat out of the elections. Not only did the
Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP), the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
(ARF), and the opposition bloc Armenian National Congress (ANC) refuse
to nominate or support any candidate, but they also relinquished
their organizational capabilities for monitoring the electoral
process. Moreover, these parties did not call for elections boycott
per se, even though they expressed distrust in the existing democratic
mechanisms for regime change. Since 1991, behind-the-scenes bargaining
between the government and the oppositional political forces has given
rise to a loss of public trust in Armenia’s political institutions.
During President Sargsyan’s first term in office, he did not encourage
the independence of the judiciary or the legislature, both of which
continue to act as mere appendages of the executive. He reinvented
the Soviet methods of direct party control over higher educational
institutions and secondary schools: the President, the Prime Minister,
and the Speaker of the Parliament (all members of the ruling Republican
Party) have been “elected” heads of the governing councils of major
state universities. The pseudo student councils are also run by the
Republican youth, and approximately 90 percent of the secondary school
principals are Republicans.
Sargsyan also pointedly blurred the distinction between the organs
of state and the current political administration. He consolidated
monopolistic control and actual censorship over Armenian main
broadcast media, including the state-funded public television H1 and
other popular Armenian TV channels (for instance, massive protest
demonstrations in Yerevan on the President’s inauguration day,
April 9, which resulted in tense standoff and clashes with police,
never received live broadcast on any channel, while the main news
program on H1 gave them only two minutes out of 46). Therefore,
the deactivation of the major political parties just prior to the
presidential elections threatened to severely damage the ostensibly
democratic political system of the Republic.
However, this political desolation had a boomerang effect against the
incumbent authorities, producing a new protest movement with Raffi
Hovannissian, until then a non-heavyweight politician, as its leader.
His emphasis on poverty, emigration, and other long-standing social
grievances – coupled with the fact that he was a candidate considered
to be without a history of corruption – was sufficient to mobilize
the existing anti-government sentiment. Irrespective of where further
developments could take Armenia, Hovannissian’s success already proved
to be an important democratic achievement that shook the foundations
of Sargsyan’s nascent authoritarianism. This societal awakening has
prompted mass defiance against the government’s pressure to vote for
the incumbent as well as post-election protests throughout provinces
in Armenia.
Large segments of the Armenian population have rejected the
conduct of both the poll and vote counting as fraudulent, also
dismissing the ratification of the elections in the initial reports
of international monitoring missions. Citizen activist Lena Nazaryan
and her supporters disrupted a press conference conducted by observers
from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE),
branding them as “political tourists” who were “legitimizing the
fraudulent election.” Arthur Sakunts, a leading Western-backed activist
and recipient of the Freedom Defender Award, challenged US President
Barack Obama’s congratulations for Sargsyan’s reelection. He claimed
that Obama “has clearly got himself among those restricting freedom
and encouraging the restriction of freedom” and even questioned the
value of the award received from the US government. This wide spread
disappointment in Western attitude toward democracy in Armenia is
echoed by various Armenian-American civic groups and activists who have
closely followed the elections and held a series of protest gatherings.
On the whole, Armenia emerged from the 2013 Armenian elections with
the masses feeling more alienated and disenfranchised. This leaves
the President with less internal legitimacy and thus exposed to more
external pressures than ever. The hasty recognitions of the election
results by Russia, the United States, NATO, France, Iran, Turkey,
and other international actors signaled that the incumbent President
is the preferred candidate for the world and regional centers of power.
These unfortunate events unfold as Armenia finds itself in an
all-encompassing crisis.
A Country in Crisis
Between 2009 and 2011, some 250,000 Armenians became poor and currently
one-third of the population lives below the poverty line.
According to the Armenian government, the average monthly real
consumption of Armenia’s population decreased by 6.1 percent in 2011
as compared to 2008. The economy’s slow recovery from a contraction
of over 14 percent in 2009 (mainly due to the global economic crisis)
will be severely hampered by the continuing outflow of both human
and monetary capital, as well as by the sharp surge in current and
future external debt servicing: about US$418 million in 2013, over 1.5
times more than in 2012. Armenia’s balance of payments is more and
more reliant on foreign credits. It is expected that the government
will acquire new international loans this year, most of which will
be unproductively spent on managing foreign debt, thus squandering
precious funds. In addition, the economic and transport blockade by
Turkey and Azerbaijan continues to suffocate the Armenian economy. The
net result is Armenia’s ever growing economic and political dependence
on foreign powers.
On the geostrategic level, the attainment of reliable security
guarantees and, above all, defensible borders are central issues for
Armenia. The Ottoman Turkish purpose in perpetrating the Genocide of
1915-1923 was not so much to physically exterminate the Armenians, as
it was to destroyArmenia as a potentially autonomous or independent
nation. From 1918 to 1920, this potential evolved into a reality,
as Armenia was invaded, partitioned, and annexed by the then allied
Kemalist Turkey and Bolshevik Russia. Since 1991, neither Turkey nor
Azerbaijan reconciled itself to the emergence of Armenian statehood
even on the much smaller territory of 42,000 square kilometers,
where it is realized as the Republic of Armenia (RoA) and the
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR). The Armenian-Azerbaijani war over
the Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh in 1991-1994 was an organic
extension of Armenian-Turkish conflict of the beginning of the 20th
century.
Therefore, the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh is not only about
the realization of the self-determination rights of its population,
but about the long-term security and minimally sufficient strategic
depth for Armenia. Recently, however, Azerbaijan’s newly found
military conceit, boosted by huge oil revenues and large acquisition
of offensive armaments as well as unequivocal Turkish backing,
have practically rendered the international negotiations over the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict redundant. Now the threat of a resumption
of war with Azerbaijan seems more real than ever.
In this unenviably difficult situation, it will be of utmost importance
for Armenia to somehow adjust to the opposing geopolitical agendas
of the dominant powers in the region – the Russian Federation and
the US-NATO-EU bloc.
Russia’s Neo-Byzantine Agenda: Weakening an Ally into Incorporation
Allied to Russia by the bilateral Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation,
and Mutual Aid (1997) and as a member of both the Russian-led
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Collective Security
Treaty Organization (CSTO), Armenia is the fulcrum for Russian efforts
to rebuild its clout in the post-Soviet Transcaucasia, recently
rechristened the South Caucasus (incidentally, both designations are
politically and geographically inaccurate, inasmuch as Armenia and
much of modern Georgia and Azerbaijan are not part of the Caucasus).
However, while Washington has gone out of its way to strengthen its
own ally in the region with Sahakashvili’s Georgia, Russian policies
toward Armenia have taken a different turn.
Russia did not strive to improve Armenia’s economy by direct investment
into its industrial sectors or infrastructure which were shattered
by the effects of the 1988 earthquake, the collapse of the Soviet
Union, 1991-1994 war with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, and the
economic blockade of Armenia by Turkey and Azerbaijan. In a seemingly
paradoxical move, between 2007 and December 2012, its “Compatriots”
state program lured some 26,000 Armenians to apply to migrate into
sparsely inhabited regions of Russia with contracts guaranteeing
work and a naturalization process of six months rather than five
years. The Armenian government, cornered by domestic critics and a
severe demographic crisis – the post-Soviet exodus of about a third of
its population and the resultant low birthrate – belatedly expressed
its disapproval to this Russian project. Due to Armenia’s economic
crisis, large numbers are emigrating to Russia and other countries
without state-organized promotion.
This Russian position is manifestly unreasonable. The question is
whether this attitude toward Armenia represents an erratic and
inconsistent policy on the part of post-Soviet governments (who
have often been blamed by the Russian analysts for ignoring their
own geopolitical interests) or whether it is a calculated program
to incorporate Armenia into the newly-created trade and economic
organizations under the Russian umbrella, namely the Eurasian Union
and Customs Union. Two indicators in particular strongly suggest that
the latter assumption is nearer the mark.
First, Moscow vigorously pursues the Russian-language education in
Armenia at the expense of the Armenian language. In 2010, in clear
violation of the constitutional status of Armenian as the country’s
sole official language, the Law on Language (1993) was loosened to
allow foreign language instruction in public schools and universities.
Because of the existing teaching cadres and traditions, this
“amendment” promoted mostly Russian-language instruction. At the
time it was widely believed that this legal allowance was made to
meet Russian demands.
Moscow also sold advanced weaponry to Armenia’s rival, Azerbaijan,
including two surface-to-air missile systems of S-300 PMU2 Favorite
type, which is a more advanced version of the S-300 PS that was
delivered to Armenia. This move, besides generating a crisis of
confidence in Armenia about the credibility of Russian security
commitments, speaks volumes about Moscow’s stance vis-a-vis its
traditional Armenian ally. The Kremlin strategists suspect that
Armenia’s oligarchic elite, concerned with its own financial fortune,
could easily switch camps and embrace the West’s patronage. Draining
Armenia’s human resources to the point where the nation would not be
capable of resisting Azerbaijani aggression alone and could survive
only as a de facto Russian province seems to be the most realistic, if
seemingly conspiratorial, explanation for Russia’s strategy regarding
Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh then could, again, become a bargaining chip
between Moscow and Baku. Meanwhile, the Armenian migrants in Russia
could be used as an additional means by which to attach Armenia to
its former imperial master. Evidently, Moscow does not believe that
under current geopolitical conditions it would be far more beneficial
for Russia to help Armenia become a strong ally than for it to remain
a weak client state.
It is of considerable interest to observe that these Russian strategies
strikingly remind one of the millennium-old Byzantine policies toward
Armenia. Precisely a thousand years ago, the Byzantine Empire, first
undermined Armenia politically, militarily, and demographically,
both compelling and attracting hundreds of thousands of Armenians,
especially their military elite, to migrate to its remote western
regions. Subsequently, a debilitated Armenia was devoured by the
Empire. However, as a consequence, the Byzantines shouldered the
burden of defending Armenia’s southern and eastern frontiers, hitherto
effectively held by the established Armenian military, which was by
now significantly demoralized and partly removed from the operational
zone. Yet, this soft destruction of an ally as a successful buffer
state proved to be a strategic mistake of disastrous proportions:
soon after, the Empire was forced to surrender Armenia to the Seljuk
Turks, forever forsaking its former political and military clout in
the region.
One can presume that the Russians think big: they are planning an
effective incorporation of Armenia, as a step to widen their sphere
of influence in the whole region. But their miscalculation could
bring a depleted and drained Armenia to a complete demographic and
political collapse, precipitating a huge strategic loss for Russia,
Georgia, and Europe(and by extension the West), all of which would
lose a steadfast civilizational ally with a capable military force
of its own and face grave new challenges in their periphery.
The West’s Neo-Ottoman Agenda: Pushing Turkey’s Victim into
Capitulation
In a far cry from its declared commitment to promote democratic
principles and the rule of law, the US-NATO-EU alliance is first
and foremost aiming to achieve – through strategic submission of
Armenia’s foreign policy to its geopolitical agenda in the ring of
former southern Soviet republics – the following specific objectives:
the containment of Russia, the political isolation of Iran,
and an unrestricted access through Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan,
and then across the Caspian Sea for the transport of hydrocarbon
reserves of Central Asia. This agenda, however, is subtly attuned
to the projections of a hegemonic-minded Turkey – an increasingly
unpredictable NATO ally. Turkey’s visions of gaining regional
preeminence, combined with its firm denial of the Ottoman-perpetrated
Genocide, are a direct threat to Armenia.
The West’s unwillingness to confront the fundamentally destructive
strategic objectives of the Turkish-Azerbaijani bloc regarding
Armenia has been exemplified by inaction in a number of remarkable
cases. The reluctance to acknowledge the rights of the Armenian nation
to restitution, compensation, and rehabilitation has sent wrong
signals to both Turkey and Azerbaijan, encouraging their unending
hostility to Armenia and undermining chances for a sustainable
reconciliation. The West’s acquiescence to Turkey’s twenty year-old
economic blockade of Armenia, a development contrary to international
law, has cost Armenia billions of dollars. Azerbaijan’s publicly
threatening military aggression is notably promoted by the West’s
refusal to recognize the legitimacy of self-proclaimed independence
of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, even though the NKR possesses all
historical, political, demographic, legal, and moral credentials
for seceding from Azerbaijan. This degrading scenario stemming from
the West has emboldened Azerbaijan’s well-documented destruction
of thousands of irreplaceable medieval monuments of Armenian and
European cultural heritage in the province of Nakhijevan during the
2000s and the racially motivated murder of an Armenian officer at the
NATO-organized courses in Budapest in 2004 by an Azerbaijani colleague,
as well as his subsequent premature release by a NATO-member Hungary
to Azerbaijan, where the murderer was immediately pardoned, promoted
in military rank, and glorified by Ilham Aliyev’s regime in 2012.
The convergence of irrational sets of strategic interests of the West
and Turkey was best demonstrated by the imposition of the now ill-fated
Turkish-Armenian “reconciliation process” and the highly unpopular and
still unratified, Protocols between Turkey and Armenia, shortly after
President Sargsyan came to power in 2008. The Protocols recognized the
borders between Armenia and Turkey “without any preconditions,” which
simply meant a dishonest and dangerous endorsing of the consequences
of the Genocide on Armenia permanently. In full accordance with
Turkey’s long-standing position, the two governments have agreed to
sidestep all “historical issues” (including Genocide) by appointing a
“historical commission” to discuss them. No Turkish acknowledgment
of the Genocide preceded the possible diplomatic opening between the
two countries. This was like allowing an unrepentant Nazi Germany
to call for a “historical commission” to debate the Holocaust – an
outrageous prospect that President Sargsyan actually agreed upon to
possibly alleviate his low legitimacy, but simultaneously undermining
the country externally.
The West consistently refuses to provide effective security guarantees
to Armenia. What is offered to Armenia is only advancement in political
and economic relations with the European Union through the so-called
Eastern Partnership (EaP), which is seen as a provisional stage to
the final accession to the EU. The West’s enduring unresponsiveness
to the dire security needs of beleagueredArmenia, not to mention the
highly insufficient economic assistance, pushes it toward integration
with Russia.
Russian-Western Geopolitical Game: A Lose-Lose Situation
The former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed “to figure
out effective ways to slow down or prevent” Russian efforts to
create a Customs Union and Eurasian Union, describing them as
“a move to re-Sovietize the region.” At the same time, Russia has
voiced opposition to the Eastern Partnership, particularly Armenia’s
participation. Clearly, the West and Russia have specific and largely
opposing expectations from Armenia, thus severely limiting President
Sargsyan’s maneuvering capacity.
In a rapidly changing world, this rivalry between the West and
Russia could render them both as losers: without a strong and viable
Armenia, an Islamic Turkey can emerge as the sole and unruly winner
of this short-sighted brinkmanship. Ominously, such a prospect evokes
another historical parallel, when in the seventh century the Arab
Islamic armies brought catastrophe upon both the Byzantine Empire and
Sassanid Persia, after these two regional super-powers had worn each
other down in the never-ending military conflicts which were fought,
incidentally, in and around Armenia.
This tense regional atmosphere between Russia and the West as well as
the intransigence of Azerbaijan are unfavorable factors for reaching
any sustainable agreement on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, mediated
jointly by Russia, America, and France as Co-Chairs of the OSCE
Minsk Group. Undoubtedly, the low internal legitimacy of President
Sargsyan is an additional factor that may affect crucial issues on
the negotiating table. Nagorno-Karabakh remains the most sensitive
issue of Armenian politics.
The geopolitical frictions in the region are generally not conducive
to the democratic process in Armenia, since neither of the mentioned
foreign powers intends to see a genuinely democratic regime which
could act independently, on the basis of national interests, rather
than according to their zero-sum regional agendas. Nevertheless,
the majority of Armenians want change, while Sargsyan, through his
two-decade-long career of heading the highest state posts (as chief
of defense and national security establishments, Prime Minister,
and a one-term president) has amply demonstrated that he is inflicted
with substantial limitations in providing much needed socio-economic
and political reforms. Therefore, social change can hardly ensue
during Sargsyan’s presidency. Moreover, no great power appears to be
interested in such progress. On the other hand, thanks to the newly
emerged Armenian protest movement, Sargsyan’s authoritarian leanings
may be checked effectively.
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DR. ARMEN AYVAZYAN (Aivazian) is the founding director of the
ARARAT Center for Strategic Research. From 1992 to 1994, he worked
as Assistant to the President of Armenia, Adviser to the Foreign
Minister of Armenia, and Acting Head of the Armenian Delegation to
the Conference (now Organization) on Security and Cooperation in
Europe in Vienna, Austria.
http://hir.harvard.edu/2013-elections-armenias-geopolitical-future-and-prospects-for-democracy