Transcript--Graham Fuller / Alexander Jackson--Turkey and the East; Armenia

Turkey's Foreign Policy Issues: Turkey and East: Armenia

Featuring

Graham Fuller and Alexander Jackson

Graham Fuller: Thank you, Joost, for those insights.

            We finally have Alexander Jackson who is senior editor at the Caucasian Review of International Affairs who will be looking at Turkey and the East: Russia, the Caucasus etc.

Alexander Jackson: Thank you. Eurasia is a vital part of Turkey’s new foreign policy approach. As you know, the question is often posed whether Turkey is Western or Islamic. I think we should add to that the question of whether Turkey is Eurasian. Because I think Eurasia represents a very significant aspect of Turkey’s new doctrine. This new doctrine of zero problems with neighbors underpins Turkey’s whole approach to the region: Turkey’s major goal of being a regional energy hub,  the thaw with Armenia which is of course in the headlines at the moment, and Turkey’s new strategic partnership with Russia.

            This new strategic partnership with Russia is something we haven’t seen in several hundred years. It really does reverse centuries of competition and rivalry between the two states. I don’t feel that the significance of this process has been fully understood yet, fully appreciated. But it should be because Turkey and Russia together do have a vital role to play in the Caucasus and Eurasia. As these partnerships develop within the region, I think Turkey will begin to take on much more of a leadership role than it already has. The West does need to appreciate the asset that Turkey can be within Eurasia as well.

            Not, of course, that the West has any monopoly over what Turkey is going to do in Eurasia,  but the West does need to bear in mind that Turkey could rival or even supplant the current western position in the region. Over the last years the West, particularly the US, has not been seriously engaged there.  Turkey has an opportunity to step into a greater role. Domestically, Turkey is very pragmatic towards Eurasia. It has no defining ideology except the ideology of peace and stability. There is, of course, Turkey’s old doctrine of pan-Turkism which enjoyed a brief revival after the collapse of Soviet Union in early ‘90s and there is also the issue of Islam which does not figure much in Turkey’s policies either. Neither of these factors are very significant in Turkish strategic thinking today. Pan-Turkism failed as an experiment partly because Central Asian states themselves were unwilling to accept Turkey as a big brother figure, and of course Islam is a very strong political force within Central Asia at the moment.

            So I think Turkey’s future ideology towards region consists of a much looser concept of Eurasianism, one which transcends ethnicity and religion and is therefore essentially constructive in character. How this ideology develops will depend, of course, on Turkey’s internal dynamics on how questions of secularism vs Islam are resolved.  

            The successes and failures of Turkey’s current initiatives in the region, particularly the thaw with Armenia, will have impact. Turkey’s vision of Eurasia is still evolving of course and will be depend in part on these successes or failures. But the overall vision I believe encompasses four key elements. Firstly, Turkey would like a Eurasia that is stable—that’s the bottom line, and is perfectly natural.  Secondly, the region should be secular. Turkey has no real interest in a Caucasus or Central Asia which is Islamist in nature. This would go against Turkey’s own defining ideology. Eurasia should also be economically prosperous, economically interlinked within it. Turkey would like to see itself as the linchpin of a regional hub of the transportation of energy projects which would bind the region together; economic prosperity in the region is, of course, good for Turkey. And fourthly, I think Eurasia would form its own axis. It would not be western, would not be Islamic and would not be Eastern. It would be Eurasian. It would be capable of interaction with all the major powers without being overly influenced by any one of them.

            In this regard I think it’s interesting that recently the Turkish government has been calling for the creation of a Eurasian Union, similar to the European Union. It would be a common market. The economic aspect receives the chief focus. Achieving this aspiration presents considerable challenges, and I wouldn’t hold out much hope of this taking place. But the proposal is interesting because it underlines the extent to which Turkey sees economic prosperity as key to its own role in taking the leadership position in encouraging regional integration.

            What Turkey would really like is a web of energy projects or infrastructure projects which would ultimately stretch from Istanbul to Western China. Already we have the nucleus of that in the BTP pipeline, the BTA pipeline, and the BTK railroad stretching between Turkey and Azerbaijan; the next step would be to expand across the Caspian sea. Whether or not Turkey can make much progress with this project of regional integration depends on China to an extent. The next few years will be very interesting as China develops its own influence in Central Asia and the Turkic states. What is unclear is whether that should occur bilaterally, as we are seeing at the moment, or through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization which brings together China, Russia and the five Central Asian states. Turkey will of course have to adapt to a rising China; how it approaches that question will be a very interesting to watch in the years ahead.

            Undoubtedly, there will be elements of competition, but I think Turkey is very interested in integration in and of  itself, both within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and within a much deeper relationship with Beijing which would further turkey’s common goal of zero problems with neighbors. It would simply expand that category of neighbors to include powers like China that have an influence on Turkey’s periphery.

            The other aspect on which Turkey’s vision depends, of course, is Russia. How should we view this partnership? I think in part that depends on how you view Russian actions in the Caucasus after the war in Georgia. I don’t personally believe that we have seen as much of a regional geopolitical shift after that war as many people expected at the time. There was an assumption that Russia was going to return to dominate the Caucasus and restore its imperial heritage in the region. I don’t think that is necessarily the case. I believe most of the dynamics existing there before the war are still present today. Russia has achieved its objectives and is quite satisfied with the result.

            For Turkey this means that its own freedom of action still remains largely intact. The parameters which define its strategic freedom movement are still quite wide. Certainly, in contrast to the West and the US, Turkey can do lots in the Caucasus, either economically or politically, without provoking too much Russian pushback. Of course there is a question whether Russia could actually accept some kind of leadership role for Turkey, or at least a role significant enough to be perceived as co-leadership with Russia.

            The reverse is also true for Turkey: Russia is still seen as a threat by many in Turkey, reinforced by the Russian war in Georgia. From this perspective, Russia cannot be trusted. It does have designs on what it calls the  “near abroad” in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Turkey is genuinely concerned about possible Russian domination of Eurasia. This would really limit its own strategic freedom of movement, and we now see examples of how that could develop in the coming years. Russian has attempted recently to lock up Azerbaijan’s gas sector by moving towards monopolizing Azerbaijan’s gas exports. This would run directly counter to Turkey’s national interests of becoming a regional energy hub and providing multivectors for Caspian gas to reach the outside world. 

            Of course Turkey does want a multipolar world, and is not willing to accept  Russia as the unipolar power in that region to replace a Western one. Nonetheless, despite these areas of disagreement, the strategic partnership which has developed in the recent years between Russia and Turkey is really significant. Russia is now Turkey’s largest import partner. They will increase security cooperation within the Black Sea. They think eye-to-eye on many issues such as Cyprus and the Middle East peace process and, of course, energy—that’s the big one. Russia is now the source of sixty-seven percent of Turkey’s gas imports.  Russia appears willing to permit Turkey to become be a regional energy  hub, but only on Russian terms, only by accepting Russian gas through its territory to the EU.

            In the long term I think this could be detrimental to Turkish interests if Turkey for instance becomes too dependent itself on Russian gas in the same way that Ukraine is. Other countries are the same position. Turkey would leave itself open to blackmail and the politicization of energy which has already affected Ukraine, Georgia, and Turkmenistan. It’s for this reason that Turkey has been looking for energy from alternate sources, most notably Iran, but also the Caspian. To do that Turkey requires a stable Caucasus, which of course directly ties in with its thaw with Armenia. This is a major development, but it’s not yet clear how this will come out. The thaw is a regional process, it has regional implications. Armenia, Russia and the West have insisted that the thaw between Armenia and Turkey be delinked from the peace process over Nagorno-Karabagh between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

            I disagree with this very strongly because they are in fact fundamentally linked, both for Turkey and Armenia.  If Turkey unilaterally opens its border with Armenia, thereby decreasing the pressure on Armenia to sign a peace agreement with Azerbaijan on Nagorno- Karabagh, it will weaken incentives from Armenia to reach settlement with Azerbaijan. It would also have serious implications for Caspian energy development as Azerbaijan in response to such a situation would begin to look to Russia and also to Iran for other alternative energy routes.  So, it’s naïve to state the two processes are separate because they are not.

            Currently protocols of restored relations are being negotiated in the parliaments of both Armenia and Turkey. Armenia has insisted that it would not ratify the protocols until Turkey does. Turkey has now insisted that it will not ratify the protocols until Armenia commits itself to withdraw its troops from around Nagorno-Karabagh. So we have reached deadlock.

            The Armenian government is in a very difficult position here. It faces strong domestic political opposition and its the state institutions are not so stable.  It is going to be very difficult for Armenia to take the huge step of withdrawing from Karabagh at the same time as it conducts sensitive negotiations with Turkey. Russia is a key factor in this as well. How Russia chooses to respond to Turkey’s role in the Armenian thaw is still evolving. If these processes do go together, if the Armenian thaw and peace process in Nagorno-Karabagh both go ahead, then Turkey  would have really achieved something in the region. It would have unlocked one of the most frozen conflicts in the former Soviet Union which has been around nearly two decades now. This will contribute to redrawing the map of the south Caucasus.  There are many challenges ahead but we are at a moment of great opportunity as well.