Expert: Building new relationship with Armenia means changing relations with all South Caucasus

YEREVAN, April 30. /ARKA/. Turkey changes its relations with all of the South Caucasus while building a new relationship with Armenia, Director of Caucasus Institute Alexander Iskandaryan said.

In this respect, Armenia is becoming a key country for Turkey, he said.

Normalization of Armenia-Turkey relations is supported by the USA and Europe, with Russia being at least not against, Iskandaryan said Wednesday at “Caucasus-2008” international conference.

According to Iskandaryan, Turkey has taken into account the possible reaction of Azerbaijan while starting the process of normalization of its relations with Armenia.

Armenia-Turkey dialogue became one of the two most important events in the South Caucasus in 2008. The other event was the war in the South Ossetia.

“These two events are somehow interconnected,” Iskandaryan said. Both the five-day war and Armenian-Turkish dialogue were not completely unexpected, he said.

According to Iskandaryan, after Mikhail Saakashvili’s coming to power Russian-Georgian relations became “disgusting”. As to Armenian-Turkish dialogue, the countries were taking steps even before 2008, he said.

According to the expert, the South Ossetian war showed that building-up armaments and inviting foreign military instructors cannot help solve the problems. The war also demonstrated that the NATO will not come to help, he said.

After the August 2008 events Georgia stopped being something special to the West on the one hand, and Russia stopped considering Georgia in the context of its relations with the South Caucasus on the other hand, Iskandaryan said.

Georgia became something separate and specific that exists in another paradigm, Iskandaryan said. According to him, the existing South Caucasian situation speeded up the process of Armenia-Turkey dialogue.

The expert said that Eastern Partnership European policy opens up certain opportunities. He called the partnership BUMAGA (first letters of member countries – Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan) (“bumaga” is also the Russian word for “paper”).

“It is BUMAGA where nothing has been written yet, and we can make notes there ourselves,” Iskandaryan said. N.V. –0—