Azerbaijan blackmails region again

PanARMENIAN.Net - Over the past few weeks, energy-rich Azerbaijan has turned up the flame under this geographic cauldron. It was furious with Turkey for agreeing in April to a "road map" to normal relations with Armenia, which backs Nagorno Karabakh, the site of a bloody war in the early 1990s after the Soviet empire broke up, and has since become the oldest "frozen conflict" in the south Caucasus, Christian Science Monitor reports.



So Azerbaijan has used the only leverage it has - oil and gas - to influence Turkey. It's an influence that extends even to European energy goals.



Unless the Turks make resolving Nagorno Karabakh part of normalizing ties with Armenia (and Armenia objects to this), the longer gas pipeline will end as a pipe dream - or so the Azeris hinted. They threatened to withdraw Turkey's status as "most favored customer" and as the main Azeri export route for oil and gas. There's Russia as an alternative, the Azeris warned.



Azerbaijan has a self-interest in a diversified export energy market, but its overture to Russia is more than bluff. The Azeris and Russians recently signed a memo of understanding about gas sales. The concern is that this could go further and that Azerbaijan, fed up with delays over a gas pipeline to Europe, would make Russia its gas patron. Because supplies are not enough to support two gas pipelines, European governments are now pushing to realize their dream of a gas line that reaches them.



If Russia eventually gets the gas deal, it not only locks in energy supplies, it also solidifies its leverage over the Caucasus.



Multiple fears are at work in the Caucasus: at the local level about the preservation of ethnic culture, at the national level about territorial integrity, and at the international level about regional influence and access to energy markets.



This calls for a sophisticated approach that seeks to build trust in all these areas. Earlier this month, international mediators for Nagorno Karabakh quietly brought the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan together to talk on the sidelines of a conference in Prague. In June, the two presidents are expected to meet again in Russia. These are positive steps.



Last week, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Azerbaijan and Russia to try to reduce the simmering ethnic and energy tensions in the region. He made progress with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on a new north-south Russian-Turkish gas pipeline that would supply Israel and other countries. That, plus renewing a contract for Russian gas supplies to Turkey, should help reassure Moscow of its continued energy influence.



But when Mr. Erdogan, on his visit to Azerbaijan, gave in to the demand that Turkey not reopen its borders with Armenia until Nagorno Karabakh is resolved, he reignited flames in Armenia. Some speculate that the normalization process is now at risk.



This region is too small, the stakes too high, to separate politics from energy. Both will have to be handled at the same time, if perhaps on different tracks, the article says.