Azerbaijan: Is Baku Ready to Cause Geopolitical Problems over Turkish-Armenian Thaw?

Hope is laden with peril in the South Caucasus these days. After decades of enmity, Armenia and Turkey appear ready to make peace. But Azerbaijan -- Turkey's ally and Armenia's enemy -- has made it known that if the developing rapprochement does not take Baku's interests into account, then it is ready to blow up the region's present geopolitical and economic balance.

The next few days could prove to be the decisive phase in a delicate reconciliation process. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is set to begin a two-day visit to Russia starting April 16. He has broadly hinted that he might reorient Baku's abundant energy resources toward Russia, if he does not receive appropriate assurances from Turkish officials that they will not betray Azerbaijani interests as they strive to normalize relations with Armenia. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Baku is most alarmed by the prospect of Turkey's lifting an economic embargo against Armenia, a blockade imposed in the 1990s as a show of Ankara's support for Azerbaijan efforts to retain possession of the separatist enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Rumors have swirled in recent weeks that Turkey was preparing to reopen its border with Armenia.

Those rumors gained steam in early April, when US President Barack Obama visited Turkey and gave a rousing endorsement for Turkish-Armenian reconciliation efforts. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. And during an April 10 news conference in Yerevan, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan reiterated his expectation that the border would re-open soon. "We have to normalize relations with Turks," he said.

During the days leading up to Obama's visit to Turkey, a wide array of Azerbaijani officials began issuing warnings that Turkish-Azerbaijani relations would suffer grievous harm if Ankara lifted the embargo without Baku's consent. From the official standpoint in Baku, the economic blockade creates leverage on Armenia to engage in Karabakh peace talks. The lifting of the blockade, Baku worries, would end any possibility of a negotiated settlement, under which Karabakh remains under Azerbaijani jurisdiction. To punctuate Baku's displeasure, Aliyev refused to attend the Alliance of Civilizations summit held April 6-7 in Istanbul.

Immediately after the Obama visit to Turkey, Aliyev delivered a blunt message to Ankara that it could not be friends with both Baku and Yerevan at the same time. He went on to indicate that Baku would take retaliatory steps, if Turkey lifted the embargo on Armenia. He hinted that the primary form of retaliation would be a shift in Azerbaijan's energy policy away from the West and toward Moscow. The Kremlin in recent months has conducted an intensive lobbying effort to woo Baku away. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

"We follow possible geopolitical changes in the region and take necessary measures," Aliyev said during a meeting of Azerbaijan's Security Council. "It is our [Azerbaijan's] right to conduct our own policy concerning a possible new situation in the region, and we will use this right in any form."

Rasim Musabekov, a Baku-based political analyst, said he believed that Aliyev was not bluffing, and that Baku was ready to take a radical geopolitical turn. "It was not an accident that as US President Obama was meeting [Turkish President] Abdullah Gul, Aliyev was talking with Russian President Medvedev over the phone," Musabekov said in comments distributed by the Turan news agency on April 7.

Both Turkish and US leaders have sought to provide the assurances that Baku seeks, namely that its position in the Karabakh peace process will not suffer because of any Turkish-Armenian rapprochement.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan emphasized publicly on April 10 that the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations was linked to a Karabakh political settlement. "We will not sign an agreement [on the normalization of relations] with Armenia if Armenia and Azerbaijan have not reached agreement over Nagorno-Karabakh," Erdogan said. Meanwhile, the Turkish daily Hurriyet reported April 11 that Turkish and Azerbaijani officials were engaged in constant talks aimed at finessing the various diplomatic dilemmas.

Earlier, Obama held a telephone conversation with Aliyev, during which the US president reaffirmed Washington's commitment to the Karabakh peace process. Obama also reportedly presented an argument to Aliyev that Turkish-Armenian reconciliation would act as a catalyst for broader peace in the South Caucasus.

By all indications, however, Aliyev is not buying into Obama's reasoning. Aliyev's presidential press office did not release any statement on the phone conversation, and Baku's official criticism of Turkey continued unabated.

On April 9, Araz Azimov, Azerbaijan's deputy foreign minister, suggested that Baku would endorse the reopening of the Turkish-Armenian border only after a Karabakh peace settlement had been agreed upon. "Otherwise, it [the border reopening] would contradict Azerbaijani interests," Azimov told journalists in Baku on April 9.

In a backhanded manner, the president of State Oil Company (SOCAR), Rovnag Abdullayev, appeared to threaten Turkey with a disruption of natural gas supplies in the event the Turkish-Armenian border reopened without Baku's consent. "I do not believe that Turkish-Armenian border will be opened, and, therefore, I do not expect stop of gas supplies from Shah Deniz field to Turkey," Abdullayev said in comments broadcast by ANS TV on April 8.

While the government and large part of Azerbaijani society have joined in Turkey bashing in recent weeks, a few political analysts are cautioning that Baku could come to regret a rash geopolitical switch. "Of course, the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border is against Azerbaijani interests. However, the pumping [by the government] of propaganda against our major strategic ally Turkey is also very dangerous game," Elhan Shahinoglu, the head of the Baku-based Atlas Center for Political Research, told EurasiaNet in an April 10 interview.

Shahinoglu suggested that Ankara had been caught off guard by the Aliyev administration's vehemence on the border re-opening issue. He indicated that Ankara has kept Baku in the loop about the substance of the Turkish-Armenian moves on reconciliation, and that Azerbaijani officials had not expressed any particular concerns about the re-opening of the border until very recently.

Shahinoglu said that Aliyev's upcoming visit to Moscow could very well produce a reorientation of Azerbaijan's foreign policy. If Baku and Moscow were to embrace a rapprochement of their own, then American and European plans for a reordering of the continental energy equation would be shattered. In particular, all hope for building the long-contemplated Nabucco and Trans-Caspian pipelines would be lost. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

"The quick relaxation of Turkish-Azerbaijani [tension] is needed now,' Shahinoglu said. "Otherwise, serious changes in Azerbaijani foreign policy could happen, and that would be against Turkish and US interests in the region."

Somewhat ironically, Azerbaijani-Turkish relations could end up taking a turn for the better in Moscow, as Erdogan, who will be in the Russian capital at the same time as Aliyev, may meet with the disgruntled Azerbaijani president. Those discussions, in turn, could provide added momentum to a scheduled May 7 meeting in Prague between the Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders on the Karabakh issue.