Caucasus Summit Cements Cooperation Among Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia

After two days of talks, Presidents Heidar Aliyev, Eduard Shevardnadze and Ahmet Necdet Sezer signed a series of cooperation agreements on oil pipeline security, terrorism, and the fight against organized crime, including drug smuggling and illegal weapons trafficking. These agreements may indicate new patterns of friendship among the countries. Turkish President Sezer said at the opening of the summit that "new conditions after the September 11 terrorist attacks have made it necessary for the three countries to take common action."

Those friendships have been developing fast since the independence of Georgia and Azerbaijan in 1991. Due to historic and cultural ties, Turkey is Azerbaijan's closest ally and supports Baku militarily. Turkish fighters flew over Baku soon after Iran chased off a BP research vessel in a disputed oil field last July [for more information, see the Eurasia Insight archive], and some Turkish officials were quoted during the incident as saying that Turkey would support Azerbaijan militarily if Baku attacked. Georgian President Shevardnadze said in 2001 that his country would rather form the northern end of a security axis starting in Turkey than be the southern extension of a Russian-led axis, a statement which irritated Moscow.

Shevardnadze said that he hoped that the Trabzon agreements would lay a solid foundation for Georgia's strategic security. However, elements of the summit will provoke or annoy Armenia and Russia, the other Caucasus states. Azerbaijani President Aliyev told reporters in Baku upon his return from the summit that Turkey would not open its borders with Armenia before all Armenian forces are withdrawn from "occupied territories" and that he discussed his country's dispute with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh issue with the Turkish President. The foreign ministers of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey will all attend the same NATO meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland in May, further distancing them from Russia.

Russia may feel annoyed at another element of the Trabzon agreements. The countries affirmed sectional responsibility for the security of the proposed $2.8 billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, but agreed to cooperate with each other if any security problem were to arise. Russia would not benefit from the development of the pipeline, which would bypass it entirely. Washington has expressed support for the pipeline.

The summit implements a Washington-backed Turkish foreign policy that aims to institutionalize cooperation between countries that view regional and international developments similarly. The initiative follows the late Turkish President Suleyman Demirel's "Caucasus Stability Pact" initiative endorsed by Azerbaijan and Georgia at another meeting in Trabzon in April of 1998.

Perhaps leery of angering Russia, Sezer dismissed the idea that the Trabzon agreement formed a new coalition. He described the agreements as a blueprint by which "to search for security and cooperation among the three countries