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Is the United States Losing Azerbaijan? : Part Two

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 7 Issue: 79

April 23, 2010 09:00 AM Age: 34 days

Category: Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vlad’s Corner, Foreign Policy, Azerbaijan

By: Vladimir Socor

Washington’s current policies seem about to turn the US-Azerbaijan strategic partnership, from an operational concept into an empty phrase, when it is ever uttered on the US side.

On April 19 the US-Azeri military exercise Regional Response 2010, scheduled to be held in May in Azerbaijan, was cancelled, with no reasons given and no substitute dates offered. The cancellation was announced two days after the US Undersecretary of Defense, Michelle Flournoy’s, meetings with Azerbaijan’s leadership in Baku. Publicly describing Azerbaijan as a “vital partner” of the United States, Flournoy praised its contribution to the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan, as well as the Azeri security services’ successful prevention of terrorism, including planned terror attacks against US interests (www.day.az, APA, Trend, April 19, 20).

Whether Baku cancelled the exercise to signal displeasure with the overall US policy or for economic reasons (as it did in Georgia recently) or in deference to Moscow, are matters of speculation. Whichever the case, it reflects the ongoing erosion of US influence in the region.

Baku, however, is left questioning the meaning of such a strategic partnership while Washington tilts toward Armenia on the Karabakh conflict, which is the main issue in Azeri national interests. Baku is also deeply concerned by a US policy bent on splitting Turkey from Azerbaijan, in which case an isolated Baku would be forced to seek rapprochement with Moscow.

Pro-Western officials in Azerbaijan’s presidential entourage and government are aghast at the post-2009 turn in Washington’s policy, a shift clearly driven by US domestic electoral politics. As Novruz Mammadov, the head of the presidential administration’s foreign relations department, points out, US policy is consumed with debating the Armenian events of a century ago (1915), even as Armenian forces today occupy seven districts inside Azerbaijan, from which 800,000 Azeris have been “ethnically cleansed.” Current US policy also seems ready to sacrifice the Turkish-Azeri connection, although the two countries are “strategic allies with deep historic ties. Turkey is important to Azerbaijan’s partnership with the West on key security and energy projects” (Mammadov’s interview with Radio Free Europe, cited by www.day.az, April 22).

Azerbaijan has spearheaded the opening of Caspian energy resources to the West; holds the only non-Russian key to Central Asia; contributed troops and other resources to NATO and US-led operations in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan; provides transit passage for US forces and their supplies en route to Afghanistan and Central Asia; has mastered terrorism challenges in cooperation with the US; promoted US-backed security and political projects in the region (NATO partnerships, GUAM, arms control); and it provides (in line with post-2001 US policy objectives) an example of successful secular development and Western alignment in the Muslim world. In pursuing these policies, Azerbaijan has incurred serious, if calculated, risks vis-à-vis Russia and Iran.

Baku, however, feels taken for granted by the United States since the 2009 turn in Washington’s policy. The bilateral relationship had flourished during the Clinton administration; coasted on those achievements during the Bush era, by the end of which it had entered a phase of benign US neglect; and it is now perceived as malign neglect, as US domestic politics and relations with Moscow seem to outrank strategic considerations in Washington’s South Caucasus policy.

Whether inadvertently or deliberately, Washington is not nominating an ambassador to Azerbaijan. From Baku’s vantage point, this omission looks like disrespect, or the dysfunctional condition of the US political system, or both; with corresponding conclusions in Baku about the US capacity for leadership in the region. Due to the long ambassadorial vacancy, feedback about Azerbaijan’s mounting alienation hardly percolates to the top US policy making levels. US working-level officials display awareness and concern in off-the-record conversations, as do Azerbaijan’s Turkish and Georgian partners.

With the strategic partnership painfully hurt, Washington nevertheless continues to expect certain deliverables from Azerbaijan. Visiting US officials from time to time are asking Azerbaijan to support various measures against neighboring Iran, or increase contributions to the Afghanistan operations, or to stop asking Turkey to maintain the linkage between Armenian border re-opening and Armenian troop withdrawal from the inner-Azerbaijani districts.

Azerbaijan was willing for many years to bear certain burdens and risks in partnership with the US. At present, however, Baku feels that its national interests are no longer taken into account or are even jeopardized by US policies. As the officially connected, staunchly pro-Western pundit Rasim Musabayov observes: “With such a one-sided approach, Washington must be prepared for receiving not support, but ‘advice’ in response to its own treatment [of Baku]. It is unrealistic to think that one can ignore the interests of Azerbaijan, or act against those interests, while extracting dividends from its partnership with this country” (www.day.az, April 22).

Is the United States Losing Azerbaijan? : Part Three

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 7 Issue: 80

April 26, 2010 02:05 PM Age: 31 days

Category: Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vlad’s Corner, Foreign Policy, Azerbaijan

By: Vladimir Socor

Some 15 years ago Azerbaijan cast its lot in almost existential ways with the United States and Turkey. Although it was never strain-free in Washington, and fulfilled only a part of its strategic potential, the US-Azerbaijan relationship worked to mutual benefit on energy and international security issues crucial to both sides.

The relationship began fraying at the margins during the Bush administration’s final years, when Washington side-tracked the Caspian energy agenda and relegated contacts with Azerbaijan mainly to the deputy assistant secretary of state’s level. By contrast, Russia’s president, prime minister, and other top officials were personally and assiduously courting Baku, but met with a cautious response there. The US’s unedifying response to Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia raised serious questions in Baku, as elsewhere, about Washington’s capacity to stand up for its friends’ and its own interests in the region. President, Ilham Aliyev, and his government responded by bidding for time, hoping that a new US administration would put the relationship back on track.

This did not happen, however. In April 2009, the newly elected US administration launched a set of initiatives toward Turkey and Armenia that discounted and isolated Azerbaijan, undermining Baku’s negotiating position on the Karabakh conflict resolution, and potentially allowing Moscow to exploit Baku’s alienation.

After a twelve-month effort, Washington’s initiatives are seen to have backfired not only in Baku, but also in Ankara and Yerevan. This was seen in the tense, fruitless meetings of US, Turkish, and Armenian leaders during the April 12-13 nuclear security summit in Washington, and the acrimonious follow-ups (Anatolia news agency, Zaman, Milliyet, Hurriyet, Arminfo, Noyan Tapan, Armenpress, PanArmenianNews, April 14–16). This allows a time-out for reflection and an assessment of what went wrong.

As is generally recognized, the Obama administration’s April 2009 initiatives were mainly driven by domestic politics. Candidates Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton had all promised during the electoral campaign to recognize the 1915-1918 Armenian events in Ottoman Turkey as “genocide.” Once in office, however, the administration could not deliver on that promise without destroying US-Turkish relations. Moreover, the administration sought a way to avoid the domestic political crisis sparked annually by the April 24 “Armenian genocide” anniversary. That crisis forces Washington every year to choose between critical relations with Turkey and vociferous US-Armenian advocacy groups with perceived electoral power.

Thus, the administration embarked on a three-pronged policy seeking to:

    1. “Normalize” Turkish-Armenian relations, particularly by persuading Turkey to open the border with landlocked Armenia for trade and transit.

    2. Relegate the assessment of the 1915-1918 Armenian events, from the US political arena to a historians’ commission, in effect “getting the issue off the administration’s back.”

    3. Separate the Turkish-Armenian “normalization” from the long-running negotiations on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, thereby practically fracturing the solidarity of Turkey with Azerbaijan.

The administration hoped to deliver the Turkish-Armenian border re-opening in lieu of Armenian genocide recognition. In return, it expected at least some US-Armenian groups to accept a historical commission, and Yerevan henceforth to abstain from the genocide recognition campaign. Washington tried hard to persuade Turkey to abandon its long-standing policy, whereby opening the border for Armenian trade and transit is conditional on a withdrawal of Armenian troops from Azerbaijan’s interior districts (apart from Karabakh itself). Breaking that conditionality would gravely compromise Azerbaijan’s position in the negotiations to resolve the conflict.

From Baku’s perspective, Azerbaijan is being asked to pay the price of a domestic political bargain in Washington and of a US overture towards Yerevan. At times, Baku (where no US ambassador is stationed) was not even asked, but was rather expected to acquiesce. Azerbaijan feels that its interests did not seem to enter Washington’s calculations, except as a potential currency of exchange in the ongoing negotiations among other parties.

Is the United States Losing Azerbaijan? : Part Four

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 7 Issue: 80

April 26, 2010 02:07 PM Age: 31 days

Category: Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vlad’s Corner, Foreign Policy, Azerbaijan

By: Vladimir Socor

US officials claim that improving Turkish-Armenian relations and opening the border would change the whole atmosphere in the region and induce Yerevan to be flexible on troop withdrawal. Using this argument, Washington insists on separating the border-opening issue from the troop withdrawal issue, pressing for the former while delaying the latter.

Instead of pursuing this approach on convergent tracks (with both tracks converging toward a comprehensive balanced outcome), the US State Department opted from the outset for parallel tracks, with different speeds and favoring the Armenian side. It then moved overtly to a “separate-track" approach, and adopted a peremptory tone in insisting on such separation (Philip H. Gordon, US Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, Sabanci Lecture, The Brookings Institution, Washington, March 17). Thus, the State Department pushed hard for progress on the Turkey-Armenia border-opening track, while relegating the issue of Armenian troop withdrawal from Azerbaijan to a slow-moving, or indeed stationary, side-track.

Baku and, eventually, Ankara did not lend credence to that argument. A premature re-opening of the Turkish-Armenian border would have removed Yerevan’s main incentive to withdraw its troops from Azerbaijan’s districts around Karabakh. By the same token, it would have removed Baku’s main (possibly sole) leverage to persuade Armenia to withdraw those troops, as the first stage in the process to resolve the conflict. The linkage between border opening and troop withdrawal had been a fundamental element in the negotiating process for almost a decade, and is Turkish policy since 1993 (when Armenian forces crossed from Karabakh into Azerbaijan’s interior). Breaking that linkage –as per the October 2009 Turkey-Armenia protocols, strongly encouraged by the US– would undermine Baku’s patiently constructed diplomatic strategy for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Baku proposes opening all borders to trade and transit as part of the first stage in the conflict resolution process, linked with the Armenian troops’ withdrawal.

In parallel with Washington’s diplomatic initiatives, US officials criticized actual or purported human rights violations in Azerbaijan; fed (as is assumed in Baku) a media story about the presidential family’s alleged property acquisitions; and published a US State Department report claiming (without evidence) that 30 percent of Azeri students are drug users (a claim soon retracted amid an outcry). Such moves added unnecessary strain to the relationship. Azeri authorities and local analysts perceive such moves as designed to pressure Baku into acquiescing in Washington’s recent initiatives that adversely affect Azerbaijan’s top national interest –the stage-by-stage resolution of the Karabakh conflict.

Azerbaijan reacted with a surprisingly effective outreach to Turkey’s body politic, undercutting US initiatives there. Azeri government officials, parliamentarians, independent non-governmental organizations, think-tank experts, and journalists liaised with their counterparts in Ankara and Istanbul, arguing against premature Turkish ratification of the Armenian-Turkish protocols. Initially, Azerbaijan reached out to Turkey’s Kemalist opposition, where nationalist identification with kindred Azerbaijan is strong. Soon, however, a critical mass in the Islamist-rooted, governing AKP party and Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also embraced Baku’s position. Already during his December 2009 Washington visit, Erdogan publicly turned down President Obama’s entreaties to proceed with ratification of the protocols and re-opening the border. Erdogan reaffirmed his stance during his meetings with Obama and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan at the Washington nuclear security summit and in the summit’s aftermath (Anatolia news agency, Zaman, Milliyet, Hurriyet, April 14–16). Erdogan and his Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, briefed Baku in detail about the discussions with the US and Armenian sides at the Washington summit, where Azerbaijan had been kept demonstratively away by the US. Erdogan has again given public assurances that “as long as the occupation persists, we will not open the border” (CNN Turk, ATV, April 18).

With a high-stakes electoral campaign looming in Turkey, and a plateful of controversial nationalist issues already weighing on its agenda (Kurdish opening, other minority issues, Cyprus, to name a few) the AKP government will hardly risk ratifying the protocols and opening the border for Armenia, at Azerbaijan’s expense. Were the government to take that risk in response to US urgings, the issue of 800,000 Turkic Azeris ethnically cleansed from those territories would be injected into Turkey’s electoral campaign by the opposition. In asking Erdogan to face that risk, Washington may have underestimated the resilience of nationalist identification among large parts of AKP’s Islamist electorate, quite apart from the parties of Kemalist legacy.

In the run-up to the annual April 24 political drama, Washington proved unwilling to ask Yerevan to commit to withdrawing the troops from inner Azerbaijan. US initiatives have also failed to de-commit Yerevan from the pursuit of genocide recognition. Diaspora groups have kept up political pressure toward that goal in the United States, instead of easing that pressure on the Administration. Nor could Washington’s initiatives be expected to open even slight cracks in the Russia-Armenia alliance.

The US-Turkish relationship is ultimately unsinkable, despite mutually inflicted damage in recent years. Washington’s relations with pro-US Azerbaijan, however, have reached a point of critical deterioration in recent months. Whether Washington’s policy thrust is deliberate or inadvertent, or the top US policy makers are fully alert to the possible consequences or oblivious to them, remain a matter of internal debate in Baku for the time being. Traditionally accustomed to take Azerbaijan’s support for granted on the full range of US strategic interests, and currently bereft of an ambassador there, Washington does not seem to notice or appreciate the alienation that its recent initiatives have produced in Azerbaijan.

US Conflict Resolution Policy Backfires in Yerevan

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 7 Issue: 81

April 27, 2010 07:00 PM Age: 30 days

Category: Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vlad’s Corner, Foreign Policy, Armenia, Turkey

By: Vladimir Socor

The US State Department seems disappointed, but not entirely surprised, by Yerevan’s April 22 suspension of Armenian-Turkish “normalization.” Assistant Secretary of State, Philip Gordon, in charge of this policy, finds solace in Armenian President, Serzh Sargsyan’s decision to suspend, rather than terminate the effort; and hopes that Yerevan would continue to cooperate with the US-driven process goal. Gordon as well as State Department Spokesman, Philip Crowley, argued that such normalization meets the interests of Armenia, Turkey, and other [unnamed] countries in the region (press releases cited by News.Az and Arminfo, April 23).

These statements, however, seem to ignore Azerbaijan’s view and the change in Turkey’s view. Inasmuch as the normalization focuses on opening the Turkish-Armenian border unconditionally, or no longer linked to a withdrawal of Armenian troops from Azerbaijan’s interior –Baku deemed it to be against its interests all along. Ankara had rallied to Baku’s view last December already.

Since April 2009, US President, Barack Obama’s administration has pressed for opening Turkey’s border with Armenia unconditionally Thus, the October 2009 Zurich protocols, strongly backed by the US, required Turkey to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia and open the mutual border “without preconditions.”

Washington’s policy seems driven primarily by domestic politics. The administration hopes to remove the annual drama of Armenian genocide recognition from the center-stage of US politics. It seeks its way out of the dilemma of losing Turkey versus any loss of the US Armenian vote. “Normalization” of Turkish-Armenian relations, centered on the re-opening of that border, was offered as a substitute for the unfulfilled electoral-campaign promises to recognize an Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey.

Washington’s normalization concept, however, has also turned out to be unfulfilled. Tilting sharply in Armenia’s favor at Azerbaijan’s expense, it backfired first in Azerbaijan and shortly afterward in Turkey. Instead of de-aligning Ankara from Baku, as seemed briefly possible, it led Turkey and Azerbaijan to close ranks against an unconditional “normalization” of Turkish-Armenian relations, prior to a first-stage withdrawal of Armenian troops from Azerbaijan.

The US initiative seemed unrelated to any regional strategy in the South Caucasus. It actually coincided with an overall reduction of US engagement in that region, downgrading the earlier goals of conflict-resolution and promotion of energy projects. Moreover, it risked splitting its strategic partner Azerbaijan from Turkey, compromising the basis for a subsequent return to an active US policy in the region.

Previous US administrations had also proposed to open the Turkish-Armenian border, but never as a goal in itself, unconditionally, or by some deadline in the political calendar, as has most recently been the case. Moreover, those earlier discussions considered opening both the Turkish and Azeri borders with Armenia, as part of an overall settlement, without dividing Ankara and Baku from each other on that account. Those border-opening proposals were being discussed as one element in comprehensive negotiations toward stage-by-stage resolution of the Armenian-Azeri conflict, and in conditional linkage with Armenian troop withdrawal from inner-Azeri districts, again in contrast to Washington’s recent proposals.

Yet, there is an element of continuity between those earlier border-opening proposals and the latest one. That common element is the optimistic belief that open borders and freedom to trade are a prerequisite to resolution of conflict and durable peace. This carryover from Manchesterianism often colored US political debates about the possibility of opening the Azeri and Turkish borders with Armenia. Yet, the diplomatic process integrated this issue within the broader negotiations. It did not single it out from that context or allow it to become a currency of exchange in US domestic politics.

The logic of the administration’s initiative from 2009 to date has implied that Washington would “deliver” the re-opening of Turkey’s border with Armenia; while Turkey would in turn “deliver” Azerbaijan by opening the Turkish-Armenian border, without insisting on the withdrawal of Armenian troops from inner-Azeri territories. That conditionality is a long-established one in these negotiations. However, Washington currently insists that the two processes be separated and that Turkey opens that border unconditionally as per the October 2009 Zurich protocols.

Breaking that linkage would irreparably compromise the chances of a peaceful, stage-by-stage settlement of the Armenian-Azeri conflict. It would indefinitely prolong the Armenian military presence inside Azerbaijan, placing Russia in a commanding position to arbitrate the conflict, with unprecedented leverage on an Azerbaijan alienated from its strategic allies.

Washington had persuaded Ankara to break that conditionality in the October 2009 protocols, which came close to splitting Turkey from Azerbaijan. However, Turkey reinstated that conditionality unambiguously from December 2009 onward. Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declared this repeatedly and publicly, contradicting Obama and the US State Department on this account at the December 2009 and April 2010 Washington summits and afterward. Following the latter event, Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, flew to Baku with reassurances that Turkey would only open the border with Armenia if Armenian troops withdrew from inner-Azeri districts. The assurances were the more significant after the US White House had demonstratively excluded Azerbaijan from the Washington summit (Anatolia News Agency, April 14, 18-20).

The US administration’s policy has now backfired on all sides, Yerevan being the last to abandon it after the policy had failed to “deliver” Ankara and Baku. The Obama administration can now be expected to revert to a balanced approach by taking Azeri and Turkish views more carefully into account.

Parliamentary Race Looms in Azerbaijan

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 7 Issue: 91

May 11, 2010 05:40 PM Age: 16 days

Category: Eurasia Daily Monitor, Domestic/Social, Azerbaijan

By: Alman Mir - Ismail

On May 6, the official date for the next parliamentary elections was announced in Azerbaijan. According to the spokesman of the central election commission, Azer Sariyev, the next elections for the legislative body of the country will be held on November 7 (Trend News Agency, May 6).

Although, according to law, the official election campaign will start only 75 days prior to voting day, the opposition parties in the country have spent the last several months discussing various options for coalition building. In that respect, the situation is reminiscent of many previous elections, in which the small, divided opposition parties engage in endless talks about partnership and forget about election tactics, such as message development, communication and the organization of a proper door-to-door campaign. Most of their attention and energy is spent on fighting each other on the pages of opposition dailies, rather than meeting with voters. As a result, the elections always end in deep disappointment for the fragmented opposition forces.

The main current debate appears to be unfolding between the key opposition forces in the country –the Musavat and Popular Front parties. These eternal rivals have ceased cooperation since the last parliamentary elections due to Musavat’s participation in the work of the newly elected parliament, whereas the Popular Front adopted a more radical stance and called for the boycott of the election results. The opposition daily, Yeni Musavat, reported on May 7 that the chairmen of both parties have met to discuss bilateral cooperation and possibly joint campaigning in the elections. The same newspaper quoted the Musavat Chairman, Isa Gambar, as saying that it is too early to talk about any concrete results. However, it is important that the two parties meet and discuss the political situation in the country and hear each other’s opinions. The strained relations between the two parties can be judged by the fact that the Popular Front party still refuses to talk to journalists working for the Yeni Musavat newspaper, which was founded by Isa Gambar.

Meanwhile, a Member of Parliament from the opposition group Panah Huseyn, always known for his pro-Musavat stance, has criticized Isa Gambar for not uniting the opposition. He said that Isa Gambar is viewed as the only figure capable of uniting the opposition parties. In that respect, Gambar should not focus on the marginal interests of his own party but instead consider the unity of the entire opposition (Yeni Musavat, May 4). Arif Hacili, the head of Musavat’s central executive apparatus replied: “This statement is a hit to the newly emerging unity of the opposition” (www.day.az, May 7). Earlier in the week, Musavat and the Alliance in the name of Democracy, a coalition of a few very small opposition parties, led by Panah Huseyn, signed a protocol on cooperation in the upcoming elections. Yet, immediately after the signing ceremony, Panah Huseyn announced his dissatisfaction with the pace of cooperation, namely in the area of agreeing on the unified candidates in the election districts.

The ruling Yeni Azerbaijani Party seems to be untouched by these developments. Vice Parliamentary Speaker, Bahar Muradova, and member of the party, told the state news agency Azertac on May 3 that the political situation in the country can be considered as normal and that all preparations are being made for the elections. “But it would be better if the opposition forces did not look for help outside the country, but inside, among the Azeri people. Otherwise, their defeat is irreversible,” Muradova suggested.

Deputy Chairman of the ruling party, Ali Ahmadov, said that the party will be implementing many innovations in the upcoming elections. One of these will be the active participation of women and youths in the election process, both as candidates as well as voters, campaign workers and observers. “We tried this innovation in the last municipal elections in 2009 and the results were very positive. The number of women candidates has increased from 4 percent to 28 percent,” Ahmadov explained. Outlining other innovations, Ahmadov said that the election strategy of the party will be based upon steady economic growth and the well-being of the country and its citizens (Trend News Agency, May 5).

It appears that the election process in Azerbaijan may pass calmly in 2010. The ruling party seems more confident than ever, due to the continuous economic growth in the country. Opposition parties are bickering and divided as always. Most attention will now be paid to the details of the election process, rather than its anticipated outcome.