HAYK KOTANJYIAN INTRODUCED REPORT IN FRAMES OF HARVARD BSSP WORKSHOP
11:31, 5 April, 2013
YEREVAN, APRIL 5, ARMENPRESS. The Chairman of the Political Science
Association of Armenia Dr. Hayk Kotanjian introduced report entitled
“Regional Security Dynamics in the South Caucasus” within the framework
of the Harvard Black Sea Security Program Workshop held in Bucharest
on March, 2013. “Armenpress” represents the report in its entirety:
“Dear Chairman,
Dear Colleagues,
I would like to express my gratitude for organizing this 11th Harvard
Black Sea Security Program Regional Workshop in the format of Alumni
Reunion which brings together distinguished experts on regional
security dynamics to share ideas and discuss possible developments in
the Greater Black Sea Area. In my presentation of personal capacity,
I’m going mainly to deal with some aspects of regional security
dynamics in the South Caucasus; such as perspectives of the Karabakh
conflict resolution and current situation in the Armenian – Turkish
relations.
First of all, it should be mentioned that the large-scale changes
gaining an intense circulation in the geopolitical system of the
Greater Middle East provide new problems for the security of the South
Caucasus fraught with dangerous aggravation of existing intra-regional
threats.
The unfolding “Arab Spring” with unpredictable developments in Syria
and the neighboring countries, the growing role of Turkey in the
Middle East with shift in its foreign policy from the traditional
Western-oriented approach to the “Neo Ottomanism” vision with a broader
emphasis on Turkey’s relations with the Muslim world, the complexity
of development prospects of the security dynamics in Central Asia in
connection with the scheduled withdrawal of the Coalition troops from
Afghanistan at the end of 2014, as well as the ongoing system crisis
in the geostrategic space of the European Union – all these are the
factors affecting the dynamics of security environment’s changes in
the South Caucasus.
The dynamics of Armenia’s, Georgia’s and Azerbaijan’s involvement in
the international security system in both bilateral and multilateral
dimensions plays a unique role in maintaining the security in the
South Caucasus. Here as a positive factor it should be mentioned
that in comparison with its neighbors Armenia is more effective
in maintaining the balanced diversity of its security orientations
and the development of security cooperation with NATO and the CSTO,
Russia and the US, as well as with other world power centers like
the EU actively influencing the region.
Armenia’s partnership with NATO within the framework of cooperative
security goes back to 2002, when the country joined the PfP Planning
and Review Process (PARP) and then the Individual Partnership
Action Plan (IPAP), thereby getting the opportunity to make its own
contribution to multinational training, exercises and operations, as
well as to international security in general – under the auspices of
the Alliance. Since 2004 Armenia has been engaged in the NATO-led
peacekeeping Kosovo Force (KFOR) that furthered the relations
between the parties. Armenia’s peacekeepers participated in the
US-led Coalition in Iraq in 2005 – 2008. Since 2009 Armenia has been
contributing peacekeeping contingent to the International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.
Armenia appears to be in a unique position combining the knowledge
and experience gained both from the NATO-led peacekeeping operations
and the CSTO drills within the framework of the Collective Rapid
Reaction Forces and has a solid willingness to become a bridge for
sharing experience with the members of the two respected partner
organizations. For instance, the developments in Afghanistan and
particularly NATO’s decision to terminate its combat operations in
that country by 2014 emphasize the importance of consultations on the
NATO-CSTO cooperation in post-2014 Afghanistan – after the withdrawal
of the NATO Coalition Forces. Both NATO and the CSTO are interested
in neutralizing the possible threats coming from Afghanistan and in
this context the Armenian experience can serve as a good basis for
fertilizing the ground to launch the NATO-CSTO cooperation mechanisms.
It should be emphasized that the main threat to the peace and security
in the South Caucasus has been and remains the possible resumption
of the war by Azerbaijan against Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh. Thus,
the peaceful and just resolution of the Karabakh armed conflict is of
crucial importance for the security and stability of our vulnerable
region. The peaceful civil movement for the protection of the
Artsakh Armenians’ rights in the process of Perestroika and Glasnost
became a challenge to the inertia of the Stalinist value system not
recognizing the priority of individual and collective human rights,
ignoring the aspirations of ethnic minorities which were arbitrarily
driven by the will of the “father of peoples” to the mini-empires of
the Soviet Azerbaijan type.
The Armenians responded to the pogroms organized by the Azerbaijani
authorities in Sumgait, Kirovabad and Baku with a law-governed
referendum in Artsakh that recorded the adamant will of its people to
freedom. In the political-legal sense, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic
is established as a result of the referendum on the basis of the USSR
Law of the Perestroika period “On Procedures for Regulation of Issues
Related to Separation from USSR Republics” during its effectiveness –
before signing the Alma-Ata Declaration on the official dissolution
of the Soviet Union.
Another distinctive feature of the Karabakh referendum is that the
Azeri minority in compliance with the aforementioned USSR Law was
involved in the preparation of the referendum, although consequently
boycotted it on the orders of the Baku authorities. This is evidenced
by the saved documents of the Referendum Commission. World practice
shows that in this way – without intervention of the metropolis –
the right of peoples to self-determination of Bangladesh, Eritrea,
East Timor, Montenegro, and just two years ago in the South Sudan
were implemented through the expression of free will at referendums
exactly among the self-determining peoples, and not the population
in their former metropolises represented by Pakistan, Ethiopia,
Indonesia or Yugoslavia – Serbia and Sudan.
Since the armistice was signed in 1994 by the Azerbaijani, Armenian and
Nagorno Karabakh parties to the armed conflict, both Armenia and the
Nagorno Karabakh Republic have supported the peace process under the
auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group. Armenia’s and the Nagorno Karabakh
Republic’s efforts aimed to foster confidence building, as mutual
trust is the key for long term peace and stability among Armenia,
NKR and Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani leadership actions are
destroying any base of confidence building. As a symptomatic example
of such activities we can mention a case of rude falsification of the
history of the Eastern Transcaucasia with the efforts of political
“balancing” the genocidal crimes against the Armenian population in
the early 20th century with the non-existent “genocide against the
Azerbaijanis”. In 1998 the Decree of the President of the Republic
of Azerbaijan “On the genocide against the Azerbaijanis” was issued
on the basis of these falsifications.
The Azerbaijani authorities are implementing generously financed
campaign of falsifying authorship of mockery of the corpses of victims
of the Khojaly tragedy. The details of this provocation as a tool of
political struggle for power in Baku were freshly stated in the famous
interview of the then Azerbaijani President Ayaz Mutalibov to the Czech
journalist Dana Mazalova. The Armenian side has all the evidence that
the corpses were in the vicinity of the city of Agdam, which then
was in the area of responsibility of the Azerbaijani authorities,
under the control of their military forces, and the physical contact
of the Armenians with the dead bodies in order to mutilate them was
not possible.
The policy of fomenting the anti-Armenian sentiment currently is not
limited only to fooling the Azerbaijani people, but also is exported to
the international community. The denunciation of the “Ghuba” impulse of
xenophobia against the Armenians – with the attempts of manipulatively
involving the Jewish Diaspora in negative anti-Armenian sentiments,
nurtured by the Head of the neighboring state – is symptomatic. It
is his decree on the establishment of the genocide memorial complex
that actually canonized the untested version of the perpetrators
of the mass death of people buried in the excavated graves in North
Azerbaijan and their national and religious affiliation. The colleagues
from Israel and the Jewish Diaspora are resentful that the Head of
Azerbaijan includes in the state protocol the visits of the Jewish
organizations leaders to the memorial built allegedly on the remains
of the Jews killed by the Armenians, but in fact – on the graves of
the Armenians killed in expeditionary raid into the North Azerbaijan
in 1918 by the Caucasian Islamic army led by Turkish General Khalil
Pasha and Caucasian Tartar gangs.
Another vivid example of Azerbaijani leadership deliberate policy
toward preventing any possibility of confidence building process
between Armenia, the Nagorno Karabakh Republic and Azerbaijan is the
persecution orgy with public mass burning of books of Azerbaijani
eminent writer Akram Aylisli. In his novel Aylisli dared to truthfully
describe along with the peace and good neighborliness of the Armenians
and Caucasian Tartars in Nakhichevani city of Agulis also the cruelty
of Turkish and Caucasian Tartars against the Armenian population
of Nakhichevan and Baku. The official and committed-to-authorities
public circles reacted with repressions and treachery accusations as
per the worst traditions of Nazi Germany. The parallels between the
fires of the books by Heine, Mann, Freud, and Remarque burned by the
Nazis of Hitler’s Germany and the publications of the people’s writer
and honored artist of Azerbaijan are obvious.
The symptoms of hyper-chauvinism of the Aliyev regime is also expressed
in the glorification of Ramil Safarov – a cowardly murderer of the
sleeping colleague – an Armenian officer at the NATO international
training program. This provocation by the Azerbaijani authorities
aimed at undermining the participation of the three permanent members
of the UN Security Council – Russia, the US and France – in the format
of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs in the peaceful resolution of the
Karabakh conflict – has been condemned by the authorities of all the
three Co-Chair countries.
We believe that the only realistic way which can lead to a lasting
peace between Armenia, the Nagorno Karabakh Republic and Azerbaijan
passes through the recognition of the legitimacy of 1991 referendum
and independence of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic by Azerbaijan. The
participants of the confidential negotiations based on the results
of the Karabakh war of 1992-1994 witnessed that the former President
of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev with his Armenian counterparts was also
inclined to the possibility of such an effective resolution of the
conflict.
The preparation of the Azerbaijani, Armenian and Nagorno-Karabakh
populations for the recognition of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, as
well as for parallel negotiations among the Republic of Azerbaijan,
the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and the Republic of Armenia on the
status of some territories of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic’s security
zone – to guarantee the security of the population and sustainable
development of all the three independent states – could be a factor in
the establishment of lasting peace and security in the South Caucasus
and its integration into the international community.
Another obstacle on the road toward peace and stability in the South
Caucasus is the Turkey’s policy of isolation and blackmail against
Armenia. As we know, heavily influenced by Azerbaijan the Turkish
leadership has rejected the ratification of the Armenian-Turkish
protocols signed in 2009 with mediation efforts of Switzerland
and support of the US, Russia, France and the EU. Being involved in
struggle with the Turkey’s “Deep State”, current Turkish leadership in
its relations with Azerbaijan ironically backs the ideological notion
of “one people, two states” which was jointly elaborated by the former
leaders of Azerbaijan and their partners from Turkey’s “Deep State”.
Turkey continues to put preconditions on Armenia demanding unilateral
concessions in the Karabakh negotiations as well as stepping up its
state policy of denial concerning the fact of the Armenian Genocide
committed in the Ottoman Empire.
As it is well known, Armenia strongly believes that the productive way
ahead in the Armenian – Turkish relations is the ratification of the
Armenian-Turkish protocols without preconditions and establishment of
diplomatic relations between two states with simultaneous opening of
the Turkish – Armenian border, as it was signed under the auspices
of the three permanent members of the UN Security Council – France,
Russia and the United States. Meanwhile, as the Armenian President
Serzh Sargsyan has recently emphasized, Armenia cannot and will not
wait indefinitely for the ratification and will consider the recall of
its signature from protocols within the reasonable time frame. In my
personal view, normalization of the Armenian – Turkish relations on
the basis of 2009 Protocols could foster significantly the security
and stability in the South Caucasus and the surrounding Greater Black
Sea Region.
I would like also to touch upon the perspectives of Georgia’s
domestic and foreign policy in the light of recent political
developments in Georgia. It’s worthy of mention that after October
2012 well-done democratic Parliamentary Elections we are witnessing
the ongoing consultations and sometimes tensions between the President
Saakahsvili’s team and the Prime Minister Ivanishvili’s coalition. One
thing is obvious: till now the level of uncertainty is too high for
making any valid forecasts either on Georgia’s domestic or foreign
policy mid- and long-term developments. At the same time, we expect
that normalization of the Georgian – Russian relations in parallel
with keeping the advanced Georgia-West strategic partnership in
balanced harmony may play a significant role in furthering mid-
and long-term regional stability.
In the meantime, taking into account the constitutional amendments
which are set to come into force in October 2013, the center of
political power will be gradually shifted from the Government and the
President’s Office to the Georgian parliament and, in my viewpoint,
our expert community should pay more attention to the developments
within the Georgian National Assembly where the Prime Minister’s
coalition holds a majority.
At the end of my presentation I would like to highlight the importance
of the Harvard Black Sea Security Program role which since its
inception in 1997 has been playing a key role in fostering the frank
and academic discussions at expert and political level on several
issues concerning the Greater Black Sea Region. These workshops present
an important opportunity for expert community and policymakers to share
views on regional security dynamics and to come up with new ideas
which may be useful in overcoming the complicated set of challenges
facing our region through its sustainable development. I would also
like to express my gratitude to the Romanian side for hospitality and
creating all conditions necessary for organization of this workshop.”