Turkish Daily News
Oct 20 2006
‘No one can legislate historical truth’
Friday, October 20, 2006
Far from criminalizing denial of the alleged Armenian genocide, we
should decriminalize denial of the Holocaust, says an article in the
Guardian
ANKARA – Turkish Daily News
What a magnificent blow for truth, justice and humanity the French
national assembly has struck, by voting for a bill criminalizing any
denial of the alleged Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman
Empire, said an article published in the prestigious British daily
the Guardian yesterday.
“Bravo! Chapeau bas! Vive la France! But let this be only a beginning
in a brave new chapter of European history,” said the article penned
by Timothy Garton Ash. “Let the British Parliament now make it a crime
to deny that it was Russians who murdered Polish officers at Katyn in
1940. Let the Turkish parliament make it a crime to deny that France
used torture against insurgents in Algeria.”
The article said the only pity was that the European Union can’t
impose the death sentence for “these heinous thought crimes,” adding
that with time that might change. too.
The French Parliament last Thursday adopted the contentious bill,
which Turkey said dealt heavy blow to Turkish-French ties. The bill
requires approval by both the Senate and the president to become law.
It is in the hands of the French government as to whether the bill
is taken to the Senate.
“What right has the Parliament of France to prescribe by law the
correct historical terminology to characterize what another nation
did to a third nation 90 years ago?” asked the article, noting that
the bill had no moral or historical justification.
“No one can legislate historical truth. In so far as historical truth
can be established at all, it must be found by unfettered historical
research, with historians arguing over the evidence and the facts,
testing and disputing each other’s claims without fear of prosecution
or persecution.”
It said the proposed bill was a step in exactly the wrong
direction. “How can we credibly criticize Turkey, Egypt or other
states for curbing free speech, through the legislated protection of
historical, national or religious shibboleths, if we are doing ever
more of it ourselves?” it asked, in apparent reference to laws in EU
countries on denial of the Holocaust.
“Far from creating new legally enforced taboos about history,
national identity and religion, we should be dismantling those that
still remain on our statute books. Those European countries that
have them should repeal not only their blasphemy laws but also their
laws on Holocaust denial. Otherwise the charge of double standards
is impossible to refute.”
Referring to British historian David Irving, who was found guilty in
Vienna for denying the Holocaust and sentenced to prison, the article
said: “Today, if we want to defend free speech in our own countries
and to encourage it in places where it is currently denied, we should
be calling for David Irving to be released from his Austrian prison.”
It added that the Austrian law on Holocaust denial was far more
historically understandable and morally respectable than the proposed
French one. “At least the Austrians are facing up to their own
difficult past, rather than pointing the finger at somebody else’s —
but in the larger European interest we should encourage the Austrians
to repeal it.
“Only when we are prepared to allow our own most sacred cows to be
poked in the eye can we credibly demand that Islamists, Turks and
others do the same. This is a time not for erecting taboos but for
dismantling them. We must practice what we preach.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Turkish Daily News
Oct 20 2006
RTUK recommends boycott of French media programs
Friday, October 20, 2006
ANKARA – Turkish Daily News
The Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK) has recommended
a boycott of French-produced programs and films in protest of the
French Parliament’s adoption of a controversial bill that would make
it a crime to deny that Armenians were subjected to genocide at the
hands of the Ottoman Empire.
In a statement issued late on Wednesday, RTUK said its board members
had unanimously agreed that Turkish television and radio stations
should avoid airing French-made programs until France drops the
“genocide” bill.
French films, TV series and music account for about 10 percent of
the content on Turkish radio and television, according to figures
provided by RTUK.
Þaban Sevinc, a member of the RTUK, said French films were third in
popularity in Turkey behind American and Turkish films. “France is
trying to raise its voice in the world film industry. [We] hope this
decision will make some noise, even if it’s small, in the French film
industry and art world and make them ask ‘What have we done?'”
The French National Assembly last week infuriated Turkey by backing
the bill, though it is unlikely to become law due to opposition from
the Senate and French President Jacques Chirac.
Turkish consumer groups have called for a boycott of French-made
goods. Higher Education Board (YOK) Chairman Erdoðan Tezic announced
this week he was returning a prestigious French medal in protest.
But the government, while protesting the bill, has stopped short of
taking retaliatory measures such as recalling its Paris ambassador.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Namýk Tan said at a weekly press conference
yesterday that Ankara has no intention of recalling its ambassador
to France in reaction to the bill. “But this should not be regarded
as an indication of weakness. Our country’s representative should be
there to express our views to [relevant authorities] in an effective
manner,” he said.
“We are in favor of acting rationally and cool-headedly and exerting
efforts to take steps and develop a strategy in this way.”
–Boundary_(ID_BT0OPhF0GOIP+yCGcEUr3Q) —
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Armenian patriarch raises concerns over foundations bill
Turkish Daily News
Oct 20 2006
Friday, October 20, 2006
ANKARA – Turkish Daily News – Turkish Armenian Patriarch Mesrob
Mutafyan yesterday criticized a bill aimed at returning confiscated
property to minority foundations, saying it was contradictory to the
principle of equality as set forth in the Constitution.
He said if the bill was legislated in its current form, it would
not bring a solution to Turkey’s decades-old problem on minority
foundations.
Mesrob II sent letters to Parliament Speaker Bulent Arýnc, Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul to
express his views on the bill, which Parliament has been considering
as part of a European Union-backed reform package prior to the release
of the EU Commission’s key progress report next month.
“We have no request other than equal citizenship,” he said, expressing
disappointment that the bill was being evaluated on the basis of
reciprocity without taking into account the views of Turkish Armenians.
Parliament was continuing debate yesterday on the controversial bill,
which caused tension when Parliament’s Justice Commission discussed it
last month. On that occasion, the main opposition Republican People’s
Party (CHP) claimed that a decision to restore property rights for
minority foundations as envisaged by the bill would violate the
Lausanne Treaty’s principle of reciprocity, which stipulates that
improvements in rights for the Greek minority in Turkey should be
mirrored by improvements in the rights of Greece’s Turkish minority.
In a move to soothe such concerns, Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Ali
Þahin submitted a proposal, saying that the principle of reciprocity
would be upheld at the implementation phase.
“We are citizens of this country, so we believe that there is nothing
more natural than our informing you of our problems and asking you
to resolve them,” the patriarch said.
–Boundary_(ID_jBNbi3UGhViNaLccp77aEw)–

Turks protest outside French Embassy in Bucharest:
Turkish Daily News
Oct 20 2006
Diplomacy Newsline
Friday, October 20, 2006
ANK – TDN with AFP
Some 30 Turkish residents of Romania demonstrated on Wednesday outside
France’s embassy in Bucharest against a French bill making it a crime
to deny that Armenians were victims of genocide at the hands of the
Ottoman Empire.
They held up banners in French saying that politicians should not
legislate on historical matters.
Some of the demonstrators left a letter of protest at the embassy,
reported the Mediafax news agency.
The bill, which needs to be approved by the French Senate and president
to become law, provides for a year in jail for anyone denying the
alleged genocide. It was approved by a vote in the lower house of
the French Parliament last Thursday.

Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE)

Oct 20 2006
OSCE Office Head meets Armenian Parliament Speaker, discusses electoral
reform and media legislation
YEREVAN, 19 October 2006 – The Head of the OSCE Office in Yerevan,
Ambassador Vladimir Pryakhin, discussed today with Tigran Torosyan,
the Chairman of the Armenian National Assembly, the electoral reform
and amendments to the law on TV and Radio.
Mr. Torosyan informed Ambassador Pryakhin that the amendments to the
Electoral Code are expected to be adopted early December. Welcoming the
readiness by the Armenian authorities to improve election legislation,
Ambassador Pryakhin reiterated the concern expressed by experts
of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights
(ODIHR) and the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe that a
late adoption of amendments might jeopardize the preparations for
the May 2007 parliamentary elections.
Ambassador Pryakhin said the OSCE was ready to assist Armenia in
conducting elections according to international standards, and that
the OSCE/ODIHR was ready to send an observation mission provided an
invitation was issued by the Armenian authorities in a timely manner.
The Chairman of the National Assembly agreed that the invitation
should be issued as soon as possible.
Speaking about the law on TV and Radio, Ambassador Pryakhin expressed
hope that public hearings on the draft amendments would be held
before the new draft was submitted to Parliament. The previous draft
was rejected in a first reading on 3 October. He also suggested an
expert review of the amendments could be carried out with the help
of the Office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media.
The Head of the OSCE Office also informed Mr. Torosyan about the
assistance projects that have been implemented by the Office in order
to support the Armenian authorities in preparations for the elections
and in the area of capacity-building of the legislature.

Economist
Oct 20 2006
A prize affair
Oct 19th 2006 | ISTANBUL
>>From The Economist print edition
Orhan Pamuk, the French parliament and the Armenian massacres
WAS it for his writing or his commentary? The question has consumed
the country since Orhan Pamuk became the first Turk to win the Nobel
prize for literature (or indeed any Nobel). The comments, about the
mass slaughter of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks, led last year to
Mr Pamuk’s prosecution on charges of insulting the “Turkish identity”.
The charges were later dropped on a technicality, but not before they
had attracted a storm of international criticism.
Ascribing to him the Byzantine wiles displayed by some of his
characters, Mr Pamuk’s enemies are now saying that he engineered his
own trial so as to win the Nobel. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the mildly
Islamist prime minister, urged fellow Turks to “put aside polemics”
and congratulate Mr Pamuk, but the (pro-secular) president remained
pointedly silent.
The novelist’s detractors were given a boost, hours before the
award was announced, by the French National Assembly, when it voted
overwhelmingly for a bill to criminalise denial that the Armenians
were victims of a genocide. The bill is unlikely to become law, but
it still sparked a wave of anti-French demonstrations and vows that
France would somehow be made to “pay” for its misdeeds. Why not boot
out some 70,000 illegal workers from neighbouring Armenia, suggested
Yasar Yakis, a former minister from the ruling AK party?
The European Union enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn, said that the
French bill “instead of opening up the debate [on the Armenians in
Turkey] would rather close it down.” Mesrob Mutafyan, the Armenian
Orthodox patriarch in Istanbul, voiced fears that his 80,000-member
flock might now become targets for ultra-nationalist vigilantes.
Happily, no Armenian has been hurt (or deported) so far. Nor
have efforts to break the ice between ordinary Turks and Armenians
stopped-an exhibition by Turkish and Armenian photographers depicting
daily life in Istanbul and Yerevan is to open soon.
There may even be a silver lining to the French cloud. Basking on
the moral high ground, Mr Erdogan said he would not be trapped into
responding to France’s “assault on free speech” in kind. The justice
minister, Cemil Cicek, is hinting that Turkey’s article 301, under
which Mr Pamuk and scores of fellow writers and academics have been
prosecuted, may be scrapped. If it is, Turkey’s EU hopes would be
resuscitated-and future award-winning novelists could then claim to
have been judged solely by their works, not their deeds.

Screen Weekly, India
Oct 20 2006
Spirit & Impact
Rwita Dutta
Posted online: Friday, October 20, 2006 at 0000 hours IST
Indian Documentaries were much-talked about at the recently held
International 1001 Documentary Film Festival in Turkey…
Istanbul is history reincarnated. With the Asian part on one side
and Europe on the other, the city represents universality. Especially
the nine days of The “International 1001 Documentary Film Festival”
(September 29 to October 5, 2006) has accentuated the universality of
the seventh art form called ‘cinema’. The Association of Documentary
Filmmakers’ of Turkey may not have a mega budget to provide its
guests with sumptuous cocktail parties every night, but shows utmost
dedication in terms of choosing the right kind of documentaries coming
from all over the world. The festival provided a warm atmosphere for
the documentary filmmakers and spectators from all over the globe to
meet and get to know each other through cinema.
Nurdan Arca, the Director of this otherwise humble looking, low profile
festival declared the mission of the Association Of Documentary Film
Makers’ of Turkey who hosted this festival. They hold the eternal
belief that it is possible to live in a world without wars. Quite
formidable and indeed pertinent!
The festival has so far hosted more than 100 documentary makers with
754 films from 44 countries since 1977. They have till date 50,000
audience and more. This year, itself, they have a wide spectrum of
124 films from 29 countries. The documentaries exhibit varieties of
subjects. From human portraits to encounters in daily life as well as
social issues are hindered upon. This 9th edition of Documentary Film
Festival had twelve sections screened in four most significant venues
in the city: the Italian Cultural Center, the French Cultural Center,
Kamal Ataturk Cultural Center and Nazim Hikmet Cultural Center.
The focus country was Finland. It beautifully projects films, which
tell us the stories of a country perceived to be cold and distant.
Among the seven films travelling from the northern tip of the globe,
Arto Halonen was the famous one. On the closing day, the audience
was bemused by the retrospective of Arto’s six films. From Tankman
of Cuba, he has come a long way in the amazing Pavlov’s Dogs – his
latest on Russia.
Created in cooperation with the Polish TV, the four documentary films
from Poland looked at history by using footages from archives. There
were also few selected Armenian films from their one and only
International Film Festival “Golden Apricot”.
Jan Vrijman Foundation is an offshoot of the founder of the biggest
documentary film festival, IDFA in Holland, Amsterdam. This foundation
is a boon for the talented, upcoming, independent filmmakers from
across the continents as it funds and supports various projects every
year. The ninth 1001 Documentary Film Festival presents a collection
of films supported by the foundation.
The Kultur and Culture is the joint venture of the documentary makers
of USA and Turkey. One of their latest productions Time Piece is an
ensemble of collective documentaries based on different time slots
in a single day. This film had its world premiere in this festival.
Celebrated documentary makers from USA such as Albert Maysels and
Sam Pollard ere also present with their works.
In the segment named “Cultures-Colors”, eight documentaries were
screened. All of these tell us the stories of colors, cultures
and languages that are dying. For instance, Elizabeta Koneska, an
ethnologist from Macedonia traced back the existence of a Turkish
ethnic, nomadic group in Macedonia whereas a film from China highlights
the triumphs and traumas of acrobatic industry there.
Everybody Has A Story made a thoughtful insight into the everyday
lives of people, their stories and the hidden heroes among them.
Stories of forced migration and immigrants who struggle to establish
roots in their new countries seem to bear a universal theme. In
Far from Home, they share their stories of rootlessness. There were
elaborate Q/A sessions after most of the films and the audience enjoyed
the opportunity to meet with the filmmakers. Several panels were
organized amongst which were “Reproduction of violence in the media
and in documentary films”, “Growing influences of documentaries”. There
was also a master class of editing named “Editing Films: Editing Life”.
The package of Bengal was extraordinary. Tales from both East and
West Bengal were truly represented in documentaries coming from
Bangladesh as well as Kolkata. Lots of questions were asked about
Indian documentaries, which were probably been satisfactorily answered
by the Indian Film Critics present there.
Documentaries are questioning life and presenting the ethereal. They
broaden our horizons open up new windows for us to discover what
lies behind the visible. The festival in the ‘City of two Continents’
was successful in bringing out the crux of the power of documentaries!
From: Baghdasarian

Economist
Oct 20 2006
Georgia’s prospects
Oct 19th 2006
>>From Economist.com
Russia’s mixture of economic, political and covert-action pressure
on Georgia recalls of another stormy and scary period, in the Baltic
states in the 1990s, that changed history completely
WHEN your correspondent lived in the Baltics in the early 1990s, it
was common to pooh-pooh the prospect of NATO membership. The obstacles
seemed insurmountable: Soviet occupation soldiers who wouldn’t go
home; disputed borders with Russia; the expense; the gulf between NATO
standards and those of the flimsy and ill-run Baltic home guards-and
most of all the deafening lack of enthusiasm from the West.
But just as Russia’s economic sanctions shunted Baltic foreign
trade westwards, its insistence that letting the Balts join NATO
was “impermissible” (a favourite Kremlin word) was the strongest
proof that membership of the alliance was not just desirable, but
necessary. Russia neatly backed that up with footdragging on the
withdrawal of the Russian military, refusal to recognise the Baltic
states’ legal continuity from the pre-war period and endless huffing
and puffing about the language and citizenship laws. It all made local
support for NATO soar: when you scare people, they buy more insurance.
After a bit, the West came round, too. The Baltic states are still
effectively indefensible; two of them (Estonia and Latvia) still lack
border treaties with Russia. Yet, rather like the even less defensible
West Berlin during the cold war, they have gained a symbolic importance
that means they cannot be abandoned. (Or so they hope).
As an illustration, just imagine how different history would have
been if the Kremlin line in the 1990s had been: “Sure, go ahead and
join NATO if you want. We wouldn’t dream of interfering and we want
excellent relations with NATO ourselves anyway. Of course we will
pull our troops out as soon as we can…and we will be delighted
to sign border agreements as soon as possible, recognising your
historical continuity.”
That message would have destroyed the case for NATO expansion
overnight. It is unlikely that any of the ex-communist countries
would have wanted to join or that NATO would have wanted to have them.
Now Russia is making the same mistake with Georgia. NATO’s appetite for
expanding to the eastern shores of the Black Sea is mostly minimal. The
alliance is dreadfully overstretched anyway and the last thing it
needs militarily is another small poor country which needs a lot and
(pipelines apart) offers little.
But Russia’s determination to see Georgia as part of a ‘near abroad’
over which it wields a geopolitical veto is creating the mood-already
in Georgia and soon, with luck, in the West-in which the opposite
will happen.
It is not just because bullying goes down badly. Russia has signally
failed to show the benefits of being an ally. Every country that teams
up with Russia ends up regretting it. Nobody in the Kremlin seems to
have bothered to think about loyal little Armenia, savagely hit by the
sanctions against Georgia. In Belarus, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka
calls Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, “worse than Stalin” and is
putting out feelers to the West. Cheap gas sounds nice initially-but
it always comes at a high price.
The stubborn attractiveness of the ‘Euro-Atlantic orientation’ is
striking given that it survives both the hideously botched occupation
of Iraq and extraordinarily selfish agricultural protectionism. It must
surely give the Kremlin foreign policy thinkers pause for thought that
for all its faults NATO has a queue of real countries eager to join
it, whereas only a handful of puppet states such as Transdniestria
want to go in the other direction.

Economist
Oct 20 2006
Free speech under threat
Oct 19th 2006
>>From The Economist print edition
What Britain’s debate about the Islamic veil has in common with
France’s bill on Armenian genocide
IN 1999 Jack Straw, then Britain’s home secretary, was attacked for
being rude about an ethnic minority. There were demands for criminal
investigations, appeals to various commissions and public agencies, a
fevered debate over whether Mr Straw was racist. On that occasion, he
was accused of demeaning gypsies by saying that people who
masqueraded as travellers seemed to think they had a right to commit
crimes. In the past few weeks Mr Straw, now leader of the House of
Commons, has triggered a similar response by arguing that the Muslim
veil (ie, the full, face-covering niqab) is an unhelpful symbol of
separateness. This week he won the backing of his boss, Tony Blair.
These episodes are reminders not that Mr Straw is hostile to
minorities (he isn’t) but that any debate in Europe about minority
rights soon degenerates into a fight between self-proclaimed
community leaders, public agencies, the police, courts and the law.
It may be hard to reconcile militant Islam with secular Europe. But
Europeans have fostered a culture, legal system and set of
institutions that have a chilling effect on public debate, making it
hard to discuss the subject honestly.
The starting-point of this failure, argues Gerard Alexander, at the
American Enterprise Institute, is a surprising one: Holocaust-denial
laws. At the height of this year’s row over cartoons of Muhammad in a
Danish newspaper, devout Muslims argued that, if it was right to
limit free speech in one area, it was right to do it in another. They
wanted insulting the Prophet to be made a crime.
Restrictions on free speech are always undesirable. Holocaust-denial
laws may have been justified in Germany and Austria because they
helped to stop something even worse: a revival of Nazism. Yet that is
surely no longer a risk in either country. And it certainly does not
justify the extension of such laws to other countries where there is
no real threat of Nazism, such as France and Belgium; or the adoption
of “hate speech” legislation that has nothing to do with Nazism; or
the interpretation of laws against incitement to violence in a way
that constrains speech which merely causes offence.
The most vivid example of the creeping extension of Holocaust-denial
laws has come in the French National Assembly, which last week voted
for a bill to make denial of the genocide of Armenians in Turkey
during the first world war a criminal offence. The political context
for this was not just vociferous lobbying by Armenians in France but
also growing hostility among voters to the idea of Turkish membership
of the European Union. To appeal to such voters, the assembly proved
ready to place restrictions on one of the most fundamental of all
freedoms, that of speech (though in fact the bill is unlikely to
become law).
This is a perfectly logical extension of a slew of laws imposing
free-speech restrictions to suppress racial, ethnic and religious
hatred. Indeed, it may be an offence to deny the Armenian genocide in
France already, because its Holocaust-denial law was extended in 1990
to cover all crimes against humanity. Bernard Lewis, an American
historian, was condemned by a French court in 1995 under this law.
Britain also has laws against incitement to racial hatred; last
January it tried but failed to extend them to religious hatred. On
the face of it, then, it does not seem outlandish for Muslims to
demand that Islam be equally “protected” under speech-restricting
laws.
Laws against racial and religious hatred are often defended on the
ground that they are directed at racists and xenophobes. Certainly,
they have been used against such people. In 2004 Belgium’s highest
court found a Flemish far-right party, the Vlaams Blok, guilty of
racism, forcing it to disband (though it regrouped under a new name).
But such laws have not been restricted to the far right; they have
been used against pillars of society. Mr Lewis is a frequent guest of
both the Jordanian royal family and the White House. Last year, a
French court found Le Monde, the grande dame of French newspapers,
guilty of inciting hatred against Jews. Oriana Fallaci, one of
Italy’s best-known journalists, was awaiting trial for offending
Islam when she died. Such lawsuits do not discourage racists; they
discourage free speech.
Fighting for the right to speak
As always happens, an industry grows up around any such laws (and
lawsuits), dedicated to policing, sustaining and extending the legal
framework. The industry consists of government bodies, such as
Britain’s Commission for Racial Equality, which investigate
complaints; official agencies, such as France’s Conseil Superieur de
l’Audiovisuel, which monitor the media for racist remarks; and any
number of informal organisations that represent minorities and win
their spurs by doing battle with the political establishment.
Laws against incitement to hatred tend to hamper openness of debate
because they are too easily interpreted as laws against causing
offence. The placing of sanctions on “offensive” speech risks
conflating two different things: bigoted speech and constructive
criticism. The big danger is that, in the name of stopping bigots,
one may end up stopping all criticism.
The outcome is an odd combination, whereby Europe simultaneously
suppresses but also radicalises its debate about Islam. Acts of
self-censorship co-exist with fevered argument. Spain’s folklore
festivals may rid themselves of medieval depictions of Muhammad and
the Deutsche Oper in Berlin may cancel a production for fear of
Islamist reprisals. But at the same time, extremists exploit
arguments over the veil in Britain or over the pope’s reference to a
14th-century Byzantine emperor.
The good news is that politicians have begun to recognise the risk of
stifling debate. Germany’s Angela Merkel criticised the opera house
for self-censorship. Most of Mr Straw’s cabinet colleagues, and not
only Mr Blair, have rallied to support him. They are right to. It is
hard to integrate Muslims into European society. Restricting free
speech makes it even harder.

All stick and no carrot
The Messenger, Georgia
Oct 20 2006
Russia still insists the mass deportations of Georgians are just
what any western country would do: expel illegal immigrants. However,
as Russian newspaper Kommersant pointed out, when western countries
deport illegal immigrants they make sure that they are given the
proper care, and don’t let them die on the way to the plane.
The latest crisis amply demonstrates failure of Russian policy on
Georgia. Russia has pushed Georgia away probably for ever by its
actions, and now seems intent on just destabilising the country. This
short-sighted policy is all the more stupid when considering that
if they really do manage to push Georgia over the edge then Russia’s
North Caucasus will fall of the map with it.
Not even the most optimistic Kremlin apparatchik can be under the
illusion that a pro-Moscow force will ever come to power in Georgia
now. That might have been a possibility once, Moscow could have offered
to help return the separatist territories, and in return Georgia would
have been eternally grateful, but that time has long since passed.
Yesterday US Assistant Secretary of State for Eurasian affairs Dan
Fried said that a stable Georgia is in Russia’s interests. Though
that is patently obvious, it seems that no one in the Kremlin is
willing to accept the fact. Russia can only benefit from a peaceful,
predictable Georgia, and that means a democratic and united Georgia.
It is clear that any formal recognition of Abkhazia or South Ossetia
would compel the Georgian leadership to go to war, however disastrous
that would be. It is equally clear that the current status quo makes
it all but impossible for Russia and Georgia to have normal relations.
Russia has legitimate security interests of course, including not
wanting to see Georgia in NATO, or at the very least not in NATO and
with US bases on its soil, but there is more than one way to skin a
cat: deals can be struck. Georgia would almost certainly agree to most
Russian demands if Abkhazia was on the table, the all-stick-no-carrot
approach pays no dividends. Georgia bashing just makes Georgia ever
more determined to join NATO, as every time Russia lashes out it
proves that Georgia is in need of protection.
The situation as it stands could develop in two possible ways,
Russia could make good on the statements of some of its more
radical politicians and turn Georgia into a failed state. This
would be catastrophic for Georgia, but also for Russia. With
barely contained tensions in North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya and
Kabardino-Balkaria-all on Georgia’s border-any chaos in Georgia would
snowball. There is also the possibility that a freefalling Georgia
would bring Azerbaijan and Armenia with it, which would really be
a disaster.
The other scenario is the Baltic one, Russia’s isolation of Georgia
forces the latter to find new markets, democratise and westernise
quickly and pay global prices for energy, and eventually, begrudgingly,
Russia is compelled to treat Georgia as an equal partner. Whether
Georgia meets with triumph or disaster is now largely down to the
sanity of Russian decision makers. In the latest crisis, Russia has
as much to lose as Georgia does.