Saban Kardas

Research Assistant, Sakarya University

Associate Instructor, University of Utah

 

In the course of the Georgian crisis, Turkey has engaged in extensive shuttle diplomacy in the aftermath of the conflict in Georgia, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan visiting Tbilisi, Moscow and Baku to push Ankara’s plan for a Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform.  That plan, which aims to bring together Turkey, Russia and all three South Caucasus countries, has received support across the region, and Turkish diplomats are now arranging working level meetings with their counterparts. 

Since Erdogan announced this proposal, Ankara has tried to work in close cooperation with Russia on its details.  Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan had a phone conversation with Sergey Lavrov about this proposal on August 22.  A Turkish delegation visited Moscow four days later to explore the details. [1] Other countries were very much drawn in as well: Azerbaijan’s foreign minister, Elmar Mammadyarov, visited Ankara on August 29 and his Georgian counterpart, Eka Tkeshelashvili, came to Istanbul on August 31.  And Armenian officials have welcomed Turkey’s proposal.  On September 6, Turkish President Abdullah Gul is expected to visit Armenia to discuss it (Kardas 2008a).

 

The current plan, the full scope of which has not yet been announced, has its origins in discussions in the late 1990s.  Inspired by the European Union-led Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe, Turkey's president at the time, Suleyman Demirel, suggested in November 1999 a similar arrangement as a conflict prevention strategy for the Caucasus. [2] Over the next several years, Turkey pushed this idea at the OSCE as well as in the United States, Europe and the region.  Some European think-tanks picked up the idea and published reports discussing its feasibility and relevance (see for example Celac, Emerson, Tocci 2000).  Notwithstanding the expressed interest among the regional leaders, the lack of an agreed upon Western strategy for the Caucasus, political divisions in the region and Russian opposition to the formation of any new groupings within the Commonwealth of Independent States with an external power involved prevented any real progress. [3]   

But Turkey has never abandoned this project because, since the end of the Cold War, Turkey has sought to prevent crises in its neighborhood from becoming violent.  Given its experience in the Middle East, Ankara does not want to see the Caucasus drifting toward similar violence or having violence spread to Ukraine.  And encouraged by the relative success of the European idea of cooperative security in the Balkans, Turkey believes it has a chance now to introduce a similar notion to the Caucasus and thus to achieve stability and peace through close regional interaction.  It hopes to find solutions to long-running conflicts in the region through the promotion of economic interdependence, including energy, transportation and communication cooperation. [4] 

Turkey has an additional reason for advancing such a program.  The crises around Turkey have the effect of reminding the West of Turkey’s geostrategic position and political importance, something Ankara can and does use as a bargaining chip in its relations with the major powers.  Moreover, when Turkey has been reluctant to assume such an assertive role, some of the outsiders suggest that it do so (see for example Zaman 2008). 

At present, such an approach fits in with the AK Party government’s new foreign policy line intended to present Turkey as a peace broker in its surrounding regions. [5] That line emphasizes the multi-dimensional nature of Turkish foreign policy.  Prior to the conflict in Georgia, the government had come under criticism for ignoring the relations with the Caucasus and Central Asia as it sought to expand ties in the Middle East, and even Africa.  Now, with this project, it has responded to that criticism. [6] 

Economic considerations have always played a key role in Turkish foreign policy, and because of that, Ankara has always been very sensitive to the ways in which political crises and instability can prevent countries from reaping the benefits of economic cooperation.  In recent years, it has acted like a “trading state,” (Rosecrance 1986) one that uses soft power in its foreign policy and does not engage in traditional hard power politics. [7] The crisis in Georgia served as a reminder of the importance of those ideas and calculations. 

          

However, Turkey’s growing economic power also makes it more dependent on its trading partners.  At the present time, Russia is Turkey’s largest trade partner and within the last years Russia has been a major destination for Turkish investments and exports.  Despite Turkey’s support of projects like the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, two-thirds of Turkey’s gas comes from Russia, in large measure because Ankara’s effort to diversify its sources by closer cooperation with Iran has been opposed by the United States.  Turkey’s overlapping dependencies on Russia are now a major foreign policy challenge for Ankara. [8] 

 

These various factors explain Turkish policy during the Georgian crisis.  Caught between its traditional ally the United States and its regional ally Georgia on the one hand and its increasingly assertive trading partner Russia on the other, Turkey has pursued a policy intended to avoid offending either side.  Ankara was especially careful to avoid offending Moscow and decided not to protest forcefully Russia’s recognition of Georgia’s breakaway regions. [9] It acted with caution and followed a restrained policy vis-à-vis American demands as in the case of allowing the passage of American ships to the Black Sea (Kardas 2008b), something that even led some analysts to conclude that Turkey might be slipping away from the West (Baran 2008).  

Against this background, Ankara’s proposal for a Caucasus pact serves well Turkey’s apparently ambivalent policy trying to balance the conflicting requirements of its multifaceted political and economic relationships.  By involving all the parties of the region’s many hotspots in a multilateral platform, Turkey thus can avoid taking sides, especially against Russia.  And it offers a way to resolve its difficulties with Armenia.  Indeed, in exchange for its role as a mediator in the Russian-Georgian crisis, Turkey expects Moscow to use its influence in Yerevan and play a similar role there. [10] Any progress in the Turkish-Armenian relations will represent a major achievement even if the broader aspects of the pact are not realized.  

 

Because the Caucasus has so many problems both bilateral and multilateral, the ability of this initiative to address them is limited.  And the absence across the region of respect for the territorial integrity of states, a centerpiece of the modern international system, means that there is little reason to hope that the various potential participants will be able to find a common language or set aside their differences long enough to consider the possibilities such conversations might offer.  Moreover, some countries, like Russia and Armenia, benefit from the status quo, while others like Azerbaijan and Georgia, suffer from it and want change, a divide that makes such discussions even more difficult.

A fundamental problem with the proposed pact is that as long as the major regional power is seen as the aggressor, smaller countries will seek powerful external supporters.  When Russia was weaker, it opposed a Caucasus Pact fearful that this would open its sphere of influence to others; now, as it has gained strength, it will be inclined to support a group that ratifies its advantages but not one that will force it to retreat.  Since Turkey will hardly be able to balance Russia on its own, and guarantee the security of the smaller countries, the viability of the project, is highly questionable.  In fact, Turkey’s ambivalent attitude toward Russian aggression can be seen as appeasing Russia due to Ankara’s own dependence on Moscow, something that might undermine its credibility in the eyes of Georgia and Azerbaijan. [11] 

Armenia’s ongoing occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh continues to poison its relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey.  Ankara still does not have diplomatic ties with Yerevan, and Azerbaijan considers itself at war with Armenia.  The continuation of the status quo thus favors Armenia vis-à-vis Turkey and Azerbaijan.  It helps Armenia sustain its occupation of Azerbaijani territory and consolidate its gains, and the Armenian diaspora has been successful in having the events of 1915 termed genocide by many western parliaments, positions Yerevan has few reasons to retreat from. 

Many argue that Turkey’s approach to Armenia, largely a product of its ties with Azerbaijan, has damaged its relations with the West without doing much to help Azerbaijan (Amberin 2008).  Moves to normalize ties with Armenia thus require resolving some historical problems and ending Armenia’s geographic isolation.  Despite the objections of some, Turkey's AKP government is determined to move in that direction, but unless Armenia responds in ways that now seem improbable drifting away from its uncompromising position, Turkey may find itself alienating Azerbaijan with whom it must work if it wants the regional pact to work. [12]

  

Such problems make the achievement of Turkey’s goal of a regional security platform highly problematic, but these same problems, including Russia’s willingness to act as a spoiler, [13] highlight why just such an arrangement is worth pursuing.

 

References

Baran, Zeyno (2008). “Will Turkey Abandon NATO?”, The Wall Street Journal, August 29, available at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121997087258381935.html?mod=googlenews_wsj (accessed August 30, 2008). 

Celac, Sergiu, Michael Emerson, Nathalie Tocci (2000). A Stability Pact for the Caucasus, Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies, June. 

Davutoglu, Ahmet (2008). “Turkey’s Foreign Policy Vision: An Assessment of 2007”, Insight Turkey, Vol. 10, No. 1, January-March, pp. 77-96.  

Kardas, Saban (2008a). “Talks for the Caucasus Pact Underway”, Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vol. 5, Issue 167, forthcoming.

Kardas, Saban (2008b). “Turkey’s Delicate Act of Balancing in the Black Sea”, Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vol. 5, Issue 164, August 27, available at http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=427&issue_id=4599&article_id=2373331 (accessed August 30, 2008). 

Lesser, Ian O. (2008). “After Georgia: Turkey’s Looming Foreign Policy Dilemmas”, On Turkey Series, The German Marshall Fund of the United States, August 26, available at http://www.gmfus.org//doc/Lesser_Turkey_Analysis_Final0808.pdf (accessed August 30, 2008). 

Rosecrance, Richard N. (1986). The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World, New York: Basic Books.

Zaman, Amberin (2008). “Crisis in the South Caucasus: Turkey’s Big Moment?”, On Turkey Series, The German Marshall Fund of the United States, August 25, available at http://www.gmfus.org//doc/Amberin_Analysis_Turkey_0808Final.pdf (last accessed August 30, 2008). 

Notes

[1] Radikal, August 26, 2008.

[2] http://www.cnnturk.com, August 12, 2008. 

[3] Kanbolat, Hasan (2008). Başbakan ve Cumhurbaşkanı’nın Önerdiği “Kafkas İstikrar ve İşbirliği Platformu” Nedir?, Ankara: ASAM, August 14, available at http://www.asam.org.tr/tr/yazigoster.asp?ID=2476&kat1=4&kat2= (accessed August 30, 2008).   

[4] For a discussion of the current proposal from the perspective of the international relations theories, see Guner Ozkan (2008). “Turkey’s Proposal of ‘Caucasus Alliance,’: How Likely is Its Success? (1)”, Today’s Zaman, August 19, available at http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=150580 (accessed August 30, 2008); Guner Ozkan (2008). “Turkey’s Proposal of ‘Caucasus Alliance,’: How Likely is Its Success? (2)”, Today’s Zaman, August 20, available at http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=150660 (accessed August 30, 2008).  

[5] For the principles of AKP’s foreign policy, see Davutoglu (2008).   

[6] Kanbolat, Hasan (2008). 

[7] On Turkey’s soft power, see special issue of Insight Turkey, Vol. 10, No. 2, April-June, 2008.

[8] Gungor Uras (2008). “Rusya’yı Rahatsız Edemeyiz”, Milliyet, August 28, available at http://www.milliyet.com.tr/Yazar.aspx?aType=YazarDetay&Date=28.08.2008&ArticleID=983665&AuthorID=54&b=&a=G%C3%BCng%C3%B6r%20Uras (accessed August 30, 2008). 

[9] “Press Release Regarding the Independence of Georgia”, Ankara: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, August 26, 2008.

[10] Today’s Zaman, August 30, 2008. 

[11] Many observers thus believe that Turkey will be hard pressed to abandon its undeclared “neutrality” and choose sides.  See for example Lesser (2008).  Some Turkish analysts argue that Turkey has already started such a realignment by drifting towards the western camp.  See Idiz, Semih (2008). “Rusya’ya bağımlılığın sakıncaları görülüyor”, Milliyet, August 31.   

[12] “Reluctant Baku Says Armenia Visit Decision Up to Turkey”, Today’s Zaman, August 30, 2008, available at http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=151670 (accessed August 31, 2008).  

[13] Reynolds, Michael (2008). “Turkey’s Troubles in the Caucasus”, MESH Online blog, August 30, available at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2008/08/turkeys_troubles_in_the_caucasus/ (accessed August 31, 2008).