Historic Development in Turkey-Armenia Relations

Turkey and Armenia announced today that they would establish diplomatic relations. If the protocols are formally ratified by the two countries before the deadline, it would spell the end of Turkey's sixteen-year blockade of Armenia. Turkey closed its border with its Caucasian neighbor in 1993, during the Armenian-Azerbaijani war over Nagorno-Karabakh. I do not know enough about domestic politics in Armenia at the moment to speculate on whether serious political obstacles exist in the country to prevent ratification. Many Armenians in Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and the large Diaspora will certainly protest any change in relations with Turkey that does not address the issue of genocide recognition. In Turkey, there are also likely to be voices, especially among opponents of Erdogan, against opening the border with Armenia.

More interesting for watchers of the region will be the fallout among Turkey's and Armenia's neighbors: especially Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia, and Iran. For Azerbaijan, the Turkish move is a serious a blow, as the blockade was one of Azerbaijan's major instruments in pressuring Armenia during negotiations over Nagorno-Karabakh. For Georgia, the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border means increased competition and the end of profits from shipping Turkish goods to Armenia via Georgia. Both will likely become even more dependent on the U.S. for aid and protection.

For Russia, which has emerged as Armenia's main backer in recent years, the deal means both an improvement in relations with Turkey and new opportunities for energy development. Turkey perhaps stands to gain the most - on the ground and in international diplomacy.

The Destruction in South Ossetia

Ethnic diversity in the Caucasus (Source)

The Russian devastation of Georgian positions in the break-away region of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and, now, the Caucasian country's heartland signal a new reality not only in this part of the world but in Russia's role elsewhere.

As so many commentators have pointed out, this was the first time that we have seen Russia's military confront regular armed forces, as part of an international conflict, since its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. One could nitpick and point to the fighting in Chechnya, but here Russia faced a separatist insurgency carried out by irregular though effective bands of fighters. Russia's performance in that earlier conflict, however, was interpreted by many as a symptom of its military's disintegration.

Now, Russia has asserted its supremacy, before its doorstep - in the air, sea, and on (the rather treacherous) land. It faced down a modern fighting force by a small but rising power, whose army has been supplied by Ukraine, the US, and Israel (until recently). Interestingly enough, although the news showed up only on a few tickers several weeks ago, Israel suspended its arms shipments (primarily UAVs) to Georgia - probably after Russian pressure.

After the diplomatic defeat in Kosovo, which the Russians have always argued should also mean a green light for Abkhazian and Ossetian independence from Georgia, Putin and Medvedev have upped the ante - they are talking about an outright annexation of these regions to Russia. The South Caucasus, in retrospect, was a red line for Russia, beyond which it would not allow any more encroachments. With Georgia's foolish decision to launch a preemptive attack on the separatist positions in South Ossetia, Russia has seized the opportunity to take an even larger bite.

The implications for the former Soviet republics are clear - states from Turkmenistan to Ukraine (and their would-be allies in the West or elsewhere) must now own up to the fact that whatever support is delivered to them from afar better be significant if they are to assert themselves against Russia. For the weaker states among these republics, this will mean toeing a more neutral line between Russia and the West. The belligerent factions in Azerbaijan pressing for a renewal of hot war with Armenia, over control of Nagorno-Karabakh, may have been served notice. This would be a dramatic reconfiguration of the South Caucasus, with the the "TBC pipeline powers" folding their cards to Gazprom - though it remains to be seen how Turkey, another state whose current military capabilities in international conflict are still untested will react this state of affairs. To be sure, the reduction of Georgia to a rump state around Tblisi would be good news for the other resource-poor state in the region - the Republic of Armenia.

For larger former Soviet republics, such as Ukraine, Russia's actions will accelerate coalition-building with the West and investment in their armed forces. Apparently, the Ukrainian navy is not standing idly by as Russia attempts to blockade the Georgian coast, to prevent Ukrainian arms dealers from shipping weapons there. But it remains to be seen how much force, if any, Ukraine will be able to wield against Russia in this round.

Beyond its immediate sphere of influence on its frontiers, Russia has made explicit its rejection of an international system that it perceives as stacked in the West's favor. It has also made the Western European powers preaching to it look like paper tigers. Although much of Russia's rhetoric in this conflict has been directed at the US, which it blames for inciting Georgia's attack in the first place, it has become clear that the Americans decided early on that Georgia was not worth an overt confrontation with Russia. No doubt, this will bring joy to many Russian analysts and to others riding the bandwagon of America's decline. They should be careful not to overstep the new borders demarcated for them.

Watching the Caspian Sea Basin

A view of the region (Source: Perry Castaneda)

Most observers of the Middle East would agree that Iran has been making a successful run at establishing itself as a regional hegemon. So far, attention has been focused on its moves in Iraq, the Levant, and to a lesser extent, in Afghanistan. The elimination of Iraq as a threat on its western frontier has been the biggest boost to Iranian ambitions. Iran's successes in challenging the pro-Western government in Lebanon via its proxy Hizbullah and its ally Syria have further extended its westward reach all the way to the Mediterranean. Reports of Iranian activity in Afghanistan have also surfaced, especially recently. But Afghanistan offers little in the way of resources. A much more lucrative catch for Iran is the Caspian Sea basin to its north - an area with significant oil and natural gas reserves. Iran shares borders with the countries on both the Caucasian and Central Asian sides of the Caspian Sea - Azerbaijan in the west and Turkmenistan in the east.

Turkmenistan recently made the headlines when its eccentric post-Soviet dictator, Turkmenbashi Saparmurat Niyazov died. Like its other post-Soviet Central Asian neighbors, with the exception of Kazakhstan perhaps, Turkmenistan has little in the way of modern state institutions to ensure stability following the death of its revered leader. Peter Zeihan of Stratfor (you have to sign up to read it and pay, unless someone forwards it to you) is predicting that the Iranians will be hard-pressed not to make some sort of move on Turkmenistan - in order to control key oil and gas pipelines and to secure itself against an attack from the northeast. In so doing, however, Iran risks a showdown with Russia, which has been intent to monopolize Central Asian energy distribution networks through Gazprom. ADDENDUM: Josh and Nathan over at Registan are merciless in their criticism of Zeihan. The titles of their posts, "Piecing It Together, Sort Of" and "Dumb Things Written about Turkmenistan," respectively, give an indication of their critiques. I guess we'll see who's right 5 years from now.

Oil and gas fields in the southern Caspian (Perry Castaneda, 2003)

Azerbaijan has been in the news mostly due to its increasingly aggressive posturing vis-a-vis Russia. While its enemy Armenia has been moving ever closer to Russia, Azerbaijan has been seen as a Western ally, together with Georgia. Both Georgia and Azerbaijan are aiming for greater energy independence from Russia. Together with Turkey, the two Caucasian states are also trying to build an energy supply network that will bypass Russia and Iran as it delivers oil and gas to Europe and other markets (see our earlier post, "Pipe Dreams"). Iran is wary of Azerbaijan's ties to the U.S., and perhaps even more nervous about the country's potential to incite the large Azeri minority in Iran, especially in its northern provinces. A recent New York Times article suggests that the Iranians may be playing a similar kind of game they have pursued with such success in Lebanon and Afghanistan. Azerbaijan is overwhelmingly Shi'a, and although it is often represented as quintessentially secular and frequently compared to Turkey, there is a large market for Iranian-style Shi'a Islamism. Especially in the poor rural areas, Iran is investing in social programs and religious centers. According to local observers, the Iranian investment is paying off. As evidence, they cite reactions to a recent article by two Baku secularists who criticized Islam's negative impact on Azerbaijani's economic development. Provincial imams denounced the pair and an Iranian ayatollah called for their execution. It doesn't help that the regime has made no moves toward democratization (contra U.S. President Bush's statement in May 2006 after a meeting with President Ilhalm Aliyev that Azerbaijan "understands that democracy is the wave of the future"). Sooner or later, the current Azerbaijani government will face opposition from both conservative Shi'a in the provinces cut out of the oil and gas spoils as well as the secular urban elite in Baku demanding liberalization. But Iran might not have to be subversive in its activities for much longer. Although Azerbaijan has traditionally been very careful not to antagonize its southern neighbor, Aliyev has recently come out against sanctions being placed on Iran and announced that he would look to replace Russia with Iran as the country's electricity supplier.

Needless to say, Turkey, Russia, and the U.S. will not look on passively at Iranian moves northward. But who will join whom?

Pipe Dreams: Samsun-Ceyhan-Ashqelon-Eilat

A map showing the B-T-C Pipeline (Source: Wikipedia)

A number of new oil and natural gas pipelines have made the news in the past year. The most high-profile one was the recently completed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which transports oil from Azerbaijan to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan and is quickly becoming a major energy hub. This week, a 690 km natural gas pipeline running parallel to it began feeding gas from the Shah Deniz field in the Caspian Sea off Azerbaijan to Georgia and Turkey (Financial Times, December 14, 2006, p. 3).

The new pipeline, built by British Petrol and several partners, connects Baku to Erzurum in eastern Turkey, from where the gas will be fed to the port city of Ceyhan. The pipeline will eventually be able to carry gas to Europe. U.S. policymakers hope that it will challenge Russia's near-monopoly over gas export pipelines out of the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. Gazprom, Russia's largest company and Central and Eastern Europe's main supplier of gas, has recently raised its prices (even to allies such as Belarus), threatening the economies of U.S. allies Georgia and Ukraine. Notice also that the pipelines draw a big circle around Iran as well as Armenia.

While the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and this new Baku-Erzurum gas corridor aim to provide an alternative to Russian energy with an eye to Europe, a different project announced this week will feed gas, oil, and water from Russia to the Levant and possibly beyond it. Turkey and Israel are cooperating to build an underwater pipeline from Ceyhun to Ashqelon (see Ha'aretz, the Washington Times, and Zaman). Feeders will also provide water and energy to Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority. Gazprom is planning to increase gas delivery across the Black Sea to the Turkish city of Samsun from where it will continue to Ceyhan. Check out Encarta's World Atlas for regional maps showing Ceyhan (in the Turkish province of Adana) and Ashqelon.


The Israelis, for their part, will make use of a pipeline from Ashqelon to Eilat. Until now, crude oil has been pumped from Eilat northward to Ashqelon and Haifa. The recently-completed "Reverse Flow Project" will allow oil and gas to be pumped in the opposite direction, from Ashqelon to Eilat (Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company). From the port in Eilat, oil can be shipped further east via the Red Sea - at competitive prices (so argue the backers of the plan). The project has excited India, which is hoping to diversify its energy sources as its economy grows. China and South Korea could also benefit (People's Daily Online).

Israel currently imports most of its oil from Russia by oil tankers, which ship the crude from the Black Sea through the Bosphorus to Haifa, where Israel's refineries are located (Washington Times). Congestion on this waterway has driven up the price of shipping, which was the main reason for the recent cancellation of a deal with Turkey to provide Israel with fresh water (it turned out that the increase in shipping costs made the water more expensive than fresh water produced in Israel by its desalination refineries).

With all these pipelines, the Maccabees probably wouldn't have had to worry about making the oil last. Happy Hanukah - חנוכה שמח!

Addendum: The website of the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company mentioned above has two interactive, animated maps, giving you a very good sense of the movement of oil and gas within Israel, and from Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia to east Asia via Israel.

Kurds, Azeris, and the Disintegration of the Middle East

The Middle East, October 2006

An October 20 post on EurasiaNet reports that "Iranian officials are intent on keeping a lid on ethnic-minority discontent, as the country prepares for pivotal elections." The article focuses on Iranian sensitivity about an apparent resurgence in Azeri self-assertion.

Azeris, who speak a Turkic language and are mostly Shi'a, make up a quarter of Iran's population of 68 million, according to estimates. Most Azeris live in northern Iran, near the borders with Azerbaijan and Armenia. The Azeris of Iran were last in the international news spotlight when a state-owned paper published a caricature representing an Azeri as a cockroach. In the wake of that caricature's publication, which also mocked Azeris for not being able to speak Farsi, Azeris staged demonstrations, some of which turned violent. In September, protests flared up again, with a number of Azeri organizations demanding greater cultural rights. Since then, a number of Azeri activists have been arrested.

But until now, Iranian Azeris have been loyal to the state. Azerbaijan has also been careful not to antagonize its powerful southern neighbor. Certainly, tensions between the state and the Azeri minority cannot be compared to the difficult history of the country's Kurds. Iranian Kurdistan is in the northwest of the country, and is home to about 4 million Kurds. Unlike the Azeris, Iranian Kurds do not yet have a state on the other side of the border to which they might turn if things get rough. But the American invasion and subsequent (failing) occupation of Iraq has allowed the Kurds of Iraq to move closer and closer to independent statehood.

What the Kurds and the Azeris share is a history of suppression by one or more of the region's dominant ethnic groups and their representative empires: the (Muslim) Arabs, Persians, and Turks. Their claims to historic territories and to distinctive national identities were not recognized in the post-Ottoman and post-colonial orders. There are a number of other historic ethno-religious minorities in the Middle East: the Druze, Circassians, Assyrians, Armenians, Maronite Christians, and the Jews. Of all these small ethnic groups, the Jews, who benefited from a strong diasporic nationalist movement have been the clear winners of the post-colonial order. Most of the other minorities suffered genocide, deportation, and/or subjugation at the hands of one of the dominant ethnic groups. (Jews suffered the century's most horrific genocide - but mostly on European soil. Though Middle Eastern Jewry faced acute danger from Arab nationalists during and immediately after WWII, and massive displacement post-1948, it was spared genocide, and instead gained sovereign statehood together with European Jews who migrated en masse to the region after the Shoah).

Most of those watching the Iraq war and its fallout have focused on the impact of the American invasion and occupation on Iraqis. One of the most dramatic and lethal consequences of Saddam's collapse has been the civil war between Sunni and Shi'a in the country. But the current carnage represents only the preliminary phase of the far more bloody struggle that will break out to determine the new borders of incipient Kurdish, Sunni, and Shi'a states when partition becomes a real possibility (i.e., when the Americans leave). The fall of the Saddam regime also sounded the death knell for the old, Arab-nationalist (sometimes mistakenly called "secularist" - in fact, no truly secular national identity has ever emerged in the Middle East) visions of the region. The disintegration of Iraq is rendering a non-sectarian Arab national identity impossible. It is also empowering those minorities who never quite fit the paradigm.

It has become increasingly clear that Iraq is headed for a tripartite division among Kurds, Sunni, and Shi'a. While the latter two groups can count on the backing of Arabs (i.e., the Sunni states and the Islamist organizations) and Persians (Iran), the establishment of an independent Kurdistan faces the opposition of all three traditional dominant groups - Arabs, Persians, and Turks. It also unlikely to take place without the type of ethnic cleansing so familiar to 20th-century historians of Europe. In turn, the formation of a Kurdish state would provoke further crackdowns by various regimes against minority populations such as the Azeris in Iran. This would put increasing pressure on "protector states" such as Azerbaijan to attempt interventions against their more powerful neighbors, in order to liberate their irredenta. In short, the potential for momentous border revisions and waves of deadly ethnic strife has never been greater.

Anti-Israel Sentiment in Turkey

This photograph taken by an Israeli visitor in Alanya, Turkey has been circulating in Europe, the US, and Israel. Anti-American and anti-Israel sentiment has been building up in Turkey especially in the past decade. Although the country is now regarded as one of Israel's staunchest allies, and ties continue to exist in the military sector, it seems to me that many American and Jewish observers are in profound denial. Antisemitism and fierce criticism of Israel have been gaining ground among ordinary Turks. Even if Turkey is not going fundamentalist, many Turks are increasingly emphasizing the Muslim component of their identity. Although they might oppose the veil, they see themselves as part of the Muslim world. The Iraq war was one of the earlier warning signs of this. Turkey was the site of huge protests against the American invasion, and the government too refused to allow the US to mount part of the invasion from the country. What happens in Turkey might also determine what transpires in a country that many are pitching as a strategic ally (for Israel and the US) in the Caucasus - Azerbaijan, which has been supported by Turkey, especially in the former's conflict with Armenia. Azerbaijan is currently run by a corrupt despot who has cultivated ties with Israel, and the US, while carefully hedging his bets and keeping the other options open (including Iran). He, too, of course, is not immune to public opinion. So far, he has resorted mostly to inflammatory rhetoric about the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute combined with widespread anti-Armenian myths and stereotypes to appeal to popular sentiment. But it's a small step from Armenians to Jews. See coverage of anti-Israel protests in Azerbaijan.

Thanks to Carmia for passing on the photograph.