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On-going series: Crisis in the Caucasus - 2008 The Russian / Georgian Conflict and Its Impact on Azerbaijan Thomas Goltz wrote this article after spending the previous three weeks in war-battered Georgia and in Azerbaijan. He was in Istanbul when he penned these observations about Turkey. He had just driven up the coastal road on the European side of the Bosphorus, from the entrance of the Golden Horn overlooking the Topkapi Palace and the Sea of Marmara, to the mouth of the straits on the Black Sea. The following day, he would be on his way back home to Montana. . . . . . September 1, 2008 - Istanbul, Turkey Allow me to describe the Turkish
dilemma with the help of a colorful wise saying from Swahili: On the one hand, Turkey has been a loyal member of NATO for over 50 years, and presumably would like to remain so for the next 50 more; indeed, it was membership in that alliance that specifically provided Turkey with an umbrella of necessary collective security in the post-WWII period when the USSR, under Stalin, threatened to reclaim large swaths of eastern Turkey and neutralize Turkish military control of the Bosphorus itself, as established under the 1936 Treaty of Montreaux. Now, suddenly, it is Russia that is evoking Montreaux and demanding that Turkey abide by its terms to keep US and other non-riparian naval forces out of the Black Sea. Complicating this issue (and arguably in Russia's favor) has been the American (or more specifically, the Bush White House) cavalier attitude toward the treaty. When the USA finally had to do something, even just symbolically, to aid Georgia in its hour of need, it declared that it was sending in humanitarian aid, but aboard a US naval ship that exceeded the free navigation, provisions of Montreaux for military vessels. These provisions, set in 1936, defined such things as the total tonnage of warships allowed into the body of water at any given time (around 72 thousand tons, I believe), how warships over a certain tonnage must notify Turkey 15 days in advance of the ship's passage through the Straits so that Turkey can then can notify other interested parties in the Black Sea, etc. In 1936, this meant notifying the USSR; in 2008 it means notifying Russia, in real terms. Background of Turkey and
WWI US Aid to Georgia in Warships Repercussions to Turkey Turkish labor is another export. Although it has diminished since the halcyon days of the mid-1990s, when Turkish construction firms picked up huge orders to build everything in post-Soviet Russia from military barracks to malls, this is still an important income generator for giant Turkish construction firms, who are not afraid to throw around their political weight in the domestic arena. Turkish manufacturers began to complain (or whine) almost immediately, and demanded (or begged) Prime Minister Erdogan to sit down with his good friend Vladimir Putin and resolve the issue or else. Or else what? Russian Tourism These
Days The current crowd of Russian visitors are big-spending folks who are buying million dollar villas around the Mediterranean city of Antalya or renting rooms in luxury hotels. Quantifying how much they spend is difficult, but a recent trip down south suggested that every other chartered airliner arriving at Antalya's newly expanded international airport came from somewhere in Russia, and local merchants were starting to translate the shingles, advertising their services (rental cars, villas, carpets, restaurant menus, sailboat cruises, etc) from German into Russian, and no doubt with good reason profit. Turkey Imports Gas from Russia Starting in the 1980s, but rapidly accelerating in the post-Soviet 1990s and certainly today, Turkey began signing gas deal after gas deal with Moscow. Initially, they were off-set deals wherein Turkish construction firms would build things in exchange for the agreed upon value of the hydro-carbons. Slowly, but surely, however, friendship, and sweetheart, deals began to be replaced by gasp! market price, and Turkey's trade balance with Russia began to grow in the latter's favor. The days when Turkish cities were blighted by sulfur-laden air during winter due to the burning of cheap coal to heat home and office might have turned into a distant memory because more than half of all energy produced in Turkey comes from natural gas. But two-thirds (2/3rds) of that gas comes from Russia, and now a Russia that has already proven itself capable of making supply adjustments, when it is politically expedient to do so, such as the reducing the supply to western Europe via Ukraine last year, as well as the total cut off of supply of Russian gas to Georgia on New Year's Eve of 2003/2004. BTC at Risk The BTC, along with all other smaller gauge pipeline and tanker-train systems across Georgia, were shut down during the so-called Olympics War between Georgia and Russia, and became the subject of the most intense interest in Western media and policy circles, out-stripping, it often seemed, western media and policy interests in the fate of Georgia itself. "What will happen to the East-West Alternative Energy Corridor?" many a worried pundit opined. Well, the BTC has now reportedly started flowing again, to the great relief of Azerbaijan and Turkey (as well as Georgia, which also picks up transit fees from that line). But only with the unspoken permission of Moscow, which, having proven that the East-West corridor is inherently, vulnerable, could find a number of different means to shut down the show-case pipeline any time it wants: Kurdish or Armenian sabotage, would seem to be the most obvious methods to be used, although the agile mind could come up with a whole host of alternative, nefarious methods to interdict contracted flow. Whether Moscow will ever choose to do this is open to question, however, because it seems to be content to allow the Azerbaijanis their oil income (and the Turks and even Georgians their transit income) so long as they behave and not try to shoulder in on the real item that Moscow wants to control, namely gas. "Gas is Power" A similar offer was recently made to Azerbaijan, albeit, before the Georgia crisis. The Azerbaijanis initially rejected the proposal; now they say that they must "consider the market." Translation: if Azerbaijan is not getting sufficient political protection for routing its gas through Turkey at lesser profit but some perceived political gain, then it will indeed make most sense to sell into the Russian system, leaving Turkey in the lurch. Where else can Turkey get gas, either for internal use to off-set the lop-sided reliance on Russian product, or for on-routing to a thirsty Europe? Russia is already doing some very tidy deals with Egypt, Algeria and Libya, and so those sources (LNG, in fact, that comes via boat) are drying up. The last source country in the neighborhood is the one that the USA consistently tries to block anyone from doing business with: the Islamic Republic of Iran. But even there, winter conditions last year led the Iranians to cut back on delivers of the gas contracted for, creating a mini-energy crisis in Turkey. Translation of all of the above? Turkey will remain highly dependent on Russian gas and, thus, be subject to the same or even heavier levels of Russian political pressures in Georgia and the Black Sea region for the immediate and mid-term future. Some folks even say that the check-mate move is ultimately to "Eurasize Turkey," and remove it from NATO and its decades (or centuries)-long yearning for acceptance into "the West," as personified by membership in the EU. There is and always has been, I would like to note, this ideological stream in Turkish politics for almost one hundred years, variously described or acted upon by the so-called pan-Islamist and pan-Turkists, movements (or sentiments) that have seen Turkey's destiny not in or associated with Europe, but with 'The East,' and often one including an alliance with its traditional foe, Russia. What is of greater interest right now is that this ideological "Eurasianism" has now been coupled with something much less fuzzy, namely, plain old-fashioned greed (and attendant corruption). Name-Calling Among the living, the most immediate target is former Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz, the accolyte of Turkish Premier and then President Turgut Ozal in the 1980s and early 1990s, who introduced "the art of the deal" into the Turkish economy. Yilmaz, who was premier several times in the mid-1990s, was in power when Turkey negotiated the controversial "Blue Stream" trans Black Sea gas deal with Moscow, and famously declared that anyone opposed to the deal was a "traitor." Now those same detractors, looking at the bleak economic future of crushing dependence on Russia gas, are using the same term for him, and talking about investigations on charges of personal enrichment against the national interest. But if it starts with Yilmaz in the 1990s (and I do not mean to imply that it does or that he is guilty; I am merely reporting the rumblings in the Turkish press, famous for acting on the adage "throw mud at a wall, and it either sticks or leaves a mark"). It does not end with Yilmaz. There have been rumors of corruption - large and small - in Turkish governing circles for years (as in other governments, I might add), and even dark whispers of bought and sold agents of influence in high places who sold out the Turkish body politics for money or even due to that oldest of espionage tools "kompromat". (Russian for "information warfare". The word is shorthand for the compromising materials, which journalists obtain from commercial interests or security services and then publicize. The kompromat might be true, or forged, or half true, but it is always distributed to tarnish someone's reputation at the behest of a foe). Who knows? At the very least, Moscow is using the money tool. And the economic leverage does not end with putting Turkey in Moscow's debt. Flush with oil and gas cash, the giant LUKOIL is now snapping up whole filling-station chains in Turkey, and expanding its self into the lucrative "down-stream," parts of the market. Interesting, LUKOIL and other Russian giants are also expanding their subtle control of other sectors in Turkey and Azerbaijan, too. The most interesting was the purchase by the Russian beer maker Baltika of the French/Azerbaijani national beer producer Xirdalan (pronounced "khirdalan"). (Let me hasten to say that this sort of New Russian capitalist activity is not restricted to the Caucasus or Turkey, but even includes the Norilsk-owned Stillwater Mine some 40 miles east of my hometown of Livingston, Montana. Norilsk/Siberia was a slave-labor, nickel, platinum and palladium mine in the Artic Circle and a KGB cash-cow during Soviet Times. Its sole strategic-metals rival was the Stillwater until the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Then Norilsk flooded the market with its materials, watched the Stillwater price drop from a hundred bucks a share to around a dollar, and snapped the place up. Thanks, stock-market.) Russia is also using several social pressure points as it plays its cat-and-mouse game with traditional rival, Turkey. Turkish Not a Monolithic
State One group that has been particularly active (and effective) in Turkish foreign policy circles over the past 15 years or so are the so-called Circassians (Chekez), the descendants of those Caucasus Muslims forced into Ottoman exile by Czarist Russia during its conquest of the North Caucasus region during the 18th and 19th century (Adagies, Abkhaz, Chechens, Ingush, Kabardins, Muslim Ossets, etc). It makes no difference if logic would suggest that the focus of enmity among the Circassians should logically be the descendants of Czarist imperial policy, the New Russians, or even the post-Soviet Russians who committed such barbarity in Chechnya. What matters is that the Circassians have - to an almost exclusive extent - "transferred" that enmity toward the Georgians, and justify that enmity by pointing to the ultra-nationalist governments of the early 1990s that tried to dissolve the autonomous, status enjoyed by their ethnic kin in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Even northern Cyprus has gotten involved in the act, and is celebrating the independence of the two Georgian entities (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) because the process looks so much like how they obtained their own non-state status in 1974, following the Turkish invasion to save them from the Greeks. The weirdest newsoid I heard in this regard was that Armenia was considering recognizing Northern Cyprus, which would thus (theoretically) pave the way for recognition of its seized state - the Republic of Mountain Garabagh, better known as Nagorno Karabakh. I forget where I heard or read this piece of non-news, and dismiss it as an impossibility for all sorts of reasons, but find it of keen interest that it got floated at all, and how complex this business of the Age of the Microstates is rapidly becoming. And lest I forget, what everyone is in general agreement about is that that age began in 1999 with the NATO action against Serbia over Kosovo; that Russia was dead set against it and warned of consequences; and that no one in the West apparently believed or wanted to take Russia at its word. Then, after European capitals (and the United States) announced their intention to recognize Kosovo independence earlier this year, it was in fact Ankara that got its name into the historical registrar as actually being the first to recognize. Caucasus Pact Anyone outside the pro-government press immediately derided this idea as nothing more than mere theater designed to tell the world (or someone) that Turkey was, at least, and at last doing SOMETHING, but this was one of those times when doing nothing, however embarrassing, would have been better than any other option. The Georgians have already said that they will not be part of anything Russia is part of, until Russia withdraws according to the French Plan [Sarkosy's Six-Point Cease Fire], and Russia will not have anything to do with any Georgian government that is headed by Misha Saakashvili. The newly recognized states (by Russia) of South Ossetia and Abkhazia will presumably be included in the Pact, but it is hard to imagine their agreeing to do so as any sort of entities associated with the Georgian state they have just officially left. And, if we are dealing with states and sub-states and micro-states in the region, what about Karabakh, the secessionist entity in western Azerbaijan, the Armenian-occupation of which caused Ankara to slap a (rather porous) economic embargo on Armenia in order to bring Yerevean to its (economic) senses? Armenia and the Pact And here comes the weirdest moment. Although the invitation was issued before the Olympics War of mid-August, Turkey is currently all abuzz and deeply divided about what President Abdullah Gul should do with Armenian President Serge Sargissian's invitation to the Turkish president to attend a World Cup Qualifying match in Yerevan on September 6th. This, coupled with the revelation of semi-secret talks between senior Turkish and Armenian diplomats in recent months about "normalizing" relations and even opening the frontier between the two states, has liberal Turks dreaming of a new era between traditional enemies. And it sets the teeth of nationalist Turks (and those who have no time for Erdogan or Gul due to their Islamist-leanings) up in arms, and expressing ever deeper concerned about the future relations with "fraternal" Azerbaijan should Ankara lift the one major pressure point on Armenia that might result in the return of Azerbaijani land. "Burn the blanket to kill the flea," says the Turkish proverb. The Caucasus continues its slow
seismic shift, while I watch the boats enter the Bosphorus from
my perch above the Black Sea, and wonder where this all goes
from here. My routing back following my
"Summer Vacation" is via Moscow, at 2 AM tonight. Ironically,
it is the only way out of Istanbul to the US in my class of Delta
ticket. I shall send an extra message if the seven-hour lay-over
(or anything on the plane) is of interest. Back
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