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Azerbaijan key impediment to Armenia-Turkey normalization – Thomas de Waal

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Thomas de Waal

Thomas de Waal

Thomas de Waal, a British journalist and writer specializing in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus (Carnegie Endowment), considers Azerbaijan the biggest challenge to the  normalization of the Armenia-Turkey relations. In a recent interview with Tert.am, the analyst expressed a strong belief that the two countries would have longed reached an accord and opened border if not the Azerbaijani factor. “If it hadn’t been for Azerbaijan, I think that the [Zurich] Protocols – and the entire the process – would have worked. And the Armenian-Turkish border would be open now.

“Today Azerbaijan located very effectively in Ankara. Since the influence of Azerbaijan is growing in Turkey – SOCAR is a very powerful economic player – President [Ilham] Aliyev expresses solidarity with President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan; during the coup, he very strongly supported [the Turkish leader].

So the relations have got really stronger between Azerbaijan and Turkey, which means that it’s [the Armenia-Turkey process] got very difficult now,” he said.Asked to comment on Armenia’s decision to annul the protocols only ten years after their signing, the expert said he is somewhat uncertain about President Serzh Sargsyan’s move. “I am not sure I understand why this was done. I think that it was possible to leave these protocols on the shelf for a better day. So I don’t think it was a constructive step. Having said that, I guess we have to wait for a moment when this whole process can begin again in a new geopolitical environment”

Addressing the Armenian leader’s earlier statement that the country would be willing to embark on a normalization process with a revised document, the analyst said he thinks that the everything would be easier if the two processes (Armenia-Turkey and Armenia-Azerbaijan) were separate. “But I see that they are closely linked as it’s very difficult to solve one without the other.”

Mr de Waal agreed that the international community lost its interest in the protocols after the signing in October 2009. “We certainly know that the international community likes a success story, so when the protocols were signed, everyone who was there – [US Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton, [High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy] Javier Solana and [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov – [were actively engaged in the process]. As it begins to fail, the international community unfortunately loses its interest,” he added.

Nagorno-Karabakh to remain under Armenian control ‘in case of any settlement scenario’ – Thomas de Waal

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Thomas de Waal

The plausible likelihood that Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) will remain under Armenian contol in case of any outcome in the current conflict settlement process is, by and large, understandable all actors, according to Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe.

In an interview with RFE/RL (Echo Kavkaza), the expert described the fact as the most painful and acute issue in the entire conflict settlement process.

“I think everybody understands, more or less, that Nagorno-Karabakh will remain under the Armenians’ control in case of any settlement scenario. But here we also deal with the  problem of the [surrounding seven] regions which are also under Armenian troops’ control. Baku will never certainly reconcile with the loss of those territories which used to be home to half a million Azerbaijanis (who are still refugees).

And on the other hand, Armenia will never hand them over unless there are strong security guarantees. I think this problem was much easier to solve some 20 years ago,” he noted.The analyst further warned of a high risk of renewed military operations, admitting at the same time that neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan want any war now.

“No one is likely to take such chances to instigate a confrontation potentially leading to many deaths and ravages. Yet on the other hand, there is a high proneness to conflict [in light of] mutual threats, verbal statements and accumulation of heavy armament (artillery, aviation) along the Line of Contact,” he added.

Thomas de Waal described long lasting conflicts as “stable components of instability” for the entire world. In his words, the existing high challenges are better visible to those who closely follow the developments in the region. Meantime he admitted that the world superpowers (US, EU etc.) are now more focused on other hotspots (Syria, Iran, North Korea and Ukraine) as “more urgent priorities.”

“I think that the danger surely exists as this conflict is not frozen at all, and the threat of renewed military operations is really very serious. What we need now is, I think, to give more attention to it, investing every possible effort [to prevent an escalation] instead of waiting until the conflict unexpectedly resumes any time in the future,” de Waal added.

In an article published earlier on the foundation’s website, the expert said he expects the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to remain  a “Project Minimum” for Russia US and France unless the “key actors, local and international, decide to rethink their strategic priorities”.

No alternative to diplomacy in Karabakh peace – Thomas de Waal

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Thomas De Waal, a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe (specializing in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region), on Wednesday warned of imminent escalations over Nagorno-Karabakh, calling for strong efforts towards using diplomatic and political resources in reaching a breakthrough in the long-lasting land dispute.

“Last year was really very dangerous, and we really see the prospect of another escalation this year. And this year could be even more dangerous as we could see more fighting,” the expert said through a video conference as he joined a debate hosted by the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (Yerevan office).
As a key effort towards reaching peace, he stressed the importance of implementing the May 16 Vienna agreement.
“And the basis of that agreement is basically two things: the strengthening of ceasefire mandate, which is the central Armenian demand, and also the central Azerbaijani demand, which is a resumption of serious comprehensive political negotiations. So I think this is the basis for an agreement or at least for a preventive diplomacy,” he said, citing the lack of international engagement as a key reason behind the failure to reach peace.

 

Mr De Waal stressed the importance of re-energizing the Minsk Group format to make the process effective. “We need to get the American and French [co-chairs] fruitfully engaged in the process and to try to restart or remake the agreement in Vienna last year. I think it’s essential if we do not want a slow descent into a new conflict,” he added.

Thomas de Waal: Sargsyan and his team are compelled see the bigger picture on Karabakh conflict

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Thomas de waal“As Armenia’s internationally recognised government, [Armenian President] Sargsyan and his team are the country’s face to the world and are compelled see the bigger picture on the Karabakh conflict. They see that if Armenia is at least not seen to be prepared to be flexible and countenance compromise on the issue of the return of the occupied territories to Azerbaijan, that it faces the danger of possible near-term war with an ever-more bellicose government in Baku,” Thomas de Waal, a senior associate with Carnegie Europe writes.

In the article titled “Armenia’s crisis and the legacy of victory”, published in OpenDemocracy, the author presents his analysis concerning the seizure of Erebuni police station by members of “Daredevils of Sassoun” armed group discussing the successive governments, the crisis of public trust, the issue of opposition parties and the role of veterans of the 1992-94 war in the country’s domestic and foreign policies, etc.

Concerning the Karabakh conflict the author writes that; “Even if war is avoided, the status quo promises Armenia only a future of long-term international marginalisation. This is why Sargsyan continues to negotiate over the OSCE-sponsored peace deal, now being pushed hard by Russia, with the support of France and the United States, that looks very much like the one he deposed Ter-Petrosyan for backing — and why in the latest crisis Levon Ter-Petrosyan implicitly supported Sargsyan, calling on his fellow Armenians to focus on the external threat and on resolving the Karabakh conflict.”

“The only path forward on the Karabakh issue lies through much more serious negotiations. On the Armenian side, this will entail a firm commitment to giving up the occupied territories in return for Azerbaijani concessions on the status of Nagorno Karabakh itself. But in the context of the fighting in April and the political crisis in July, it is much harder for a government in Yerevan to deliver on that deal,” Thomas de Waal writes.

Referring to the content of the public discussions and the willingness of some leaders of the opposition to receive dividends on nationalist feelings of the public, de Waal concludes that; “It is unlikely that Armenia can find a way out of this impasse on its own. Its major ally, Russia, offers only coercive pressure. Armenia needs help from international friends and the more pragmatic parts of the diaspora to help it navigate a way forward at a time of domestic discord and great international uncertainty.”

Thomas de Waal: Why we need to contain the Caucasus crisis

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f572dab4af1657_572dab4af1696.thumb“Four days of violence in April unfroze the generation-old Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. It is no exaggeration to say that Armenia and Azerbaijan are two or three steps away from a Bosnia-style conflict that could be deleterious for the wider region,” writes Senior Associate at Carnegie Europe Thomas de Waal in Politico.

“Can this crisis be contained before it escalates? We first need to challenge one common preconception: the idea that Russia can fill that security vacuum and manage the conflict. Its problem is that it has simultaneously mediated and destabilized the conflict. The Russians have been selling arms to both sides. An estimated 85 percent of Azerbaijan’s weaponry comes from Russia, while Russia has a military alliance with Armenia, sealed by a new treaty signed in 2010.

“This balancing game means that Russia is unable to set the agenda in Karabakh. Both Baku and Yerevan are skeptical of Russia’s intentions.

“In Armenia especially, the new backlash against Russia is significant. Because Russia has no military presence on the ground and no monopoly on the peace process, both countries can block plans for a Russian peace-keeping force that would reassert its influence in the region.

“So the common belief that, if things get worse “Russia can handle it,” is misplaced. This poses a challenge to the United States and France. Neither has done enough to offer a balanced international plan,” Tom de Waal writes.

“Unless progress is made now, more fighting is likely to break out after the international spectacle of Azerbaijan’s much-coveted Formula 1 race in Baku ends in late June,” concludes the author.

 

Source Panorama.am

Solve Nagorno-Karabakh conflict before it explodes – Thomas de Waal

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f5707937e6d3aa_5707937e6d3e1.thumbBelow is an article by Thomas de Waal, a senior associate with Carnegie Europe and the author of “Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War”, posted by The New York Times. 

For almost three decades, the most dangerous unresolved conflict in wider Europe has lain in the mountains of the South Caucasus, in a small territory known as Nagorno-Karabakh. In the late 1980s, the region confounded the last Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

In the early 1990s, the conflict there created more than a million refugees and killed around 20,000 people. In 1994, after Armenia defeated Azerbaijan in a fight over the territory, the two countries signed a truce — but no peace agreement.
Nagorno-Karabakh erupted again last weekend. It seems one of the players — most likely Azerbaijan — decided to change the facts on the ground. Dozens of soldiers from both sides were killed before a cease-fire was proclaimed on Tuesday. It could fall apart at any moment. The situation is volatile, and there is a danger that the conflict could escalate further unless the international community stops it.

A new all-out Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the stuff of nightmares. Given the sophisticated weaponry both sides now possess, tens of thousands of young men would most likely lose their lives. Russia and Turkey, already at loggerheads and with military obligations to Armenia and Azerbaijan, respectively, could be sucked into a proxy war. Fighting in the area would also destabilize Georgia, Iran and the Russian North Caucasus. Oil and gas pipeline routes from the Caspian Sea could be threatened, too.

At the heart of the issue is the status of the Armenian-majority highland enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, which was part of Soviet Azerbaijan. As the Soviet Union crumbled, ethnic Armenians in the territory campaigned to join Armenia. This became a full-scale war, and the Armenians have maintained control of the territory since.

Nagorno-Karabakh has been mostly quiet, save for occasional skirmishes. Most international diplomats pay little attention to this protracted conflict in the Caucasus, giving the impression that Nagorno-Karabakh is intractable but not especially dangerous, like Cyprus. The hope among the international community has been that the problem can be left alone.

That notion was shaken over the past week. More than 20 years on, nationalist hatreds have not abated. In fact, they’ve been fed over the years by official propaganda on both sides. Meanwhile, the very geography of the conflict makes it inherently dangerous.

The 1994 truce left the Armenian side in control not just of the disputed province, but also of a section of Azerbaijani territory around Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenian side has no legal claim on these lands, regarding them as a protective buffer zone, but they were home to more than half a million Azerbaijanis, who were made refugees. That occupation is unsustainable and unjust, but the use of force will not deliver justice.

Azerbaijan has wasted years in denunciations of “Armenian aggression” without ever offering the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh credible guarantees that it respects their rights and does not merely wish to destroy them. A just solution of the conflict will require a serious commitment by both sides to make compromises and live together.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, has blamed France, Russia and the United States, the countries charged with mediating the conflict by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, for failing to clean up the mess. This is wrong, too. Yes, more could have been done over the years to resolve the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, but mediators mediate — they cannot alone solve conflicts between intransigent parties.

The bitter truth is that leaders in Armenia and Azerbaijan have become trapped by their own rhetoric, promising their publics total victory that can never be achieved. They have employed the status quo as a weapon to shirk hard questions about their own legitimacy or to divert people’s attention from socioeconomic problems.

A similar temptation is to identify Russia as the real villain. For sure, the Kremlin has played a role in manipulating the ethno-territorial conflicts that emerged from the breakup of the Soviet Union. And Russia continues to sell weapons to both Armenia and Azerbaijan. But Russia’s role in Nagorno-Karabakh is much weaker than it is in Georgia’s frozen conflict, let alone in Ukraine. Russia shares no border with the conflict zone, has no troops on the ground and, in different ways, supports both sides. Its ability to control what happens in Nagorno-Karabakh is limited.

If there is one ray of hope in this bleak landscape it is that there is a peace process — albeit a faltering one — in place already. A draft of a sophisticated peace plan, dating from 2005, promises both sides much of what they want: a return of Azerbaijani displaced persons and restoration of lost Azerbaijani lands in exchange for security for the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh and a promise of self-determination and perhaps, eventually, independence.

What is missing in the South Caucasus is the political will to engage with a plan that involves doing a deal with the enemy. What is missing internationally is the admission that there is no low-cost option to resolve the conflict. Over the past week, mediators helped to broker a new cease-fire. But Nagorno-Karabakh requires more than just shuttle diplomacy. A resolution requires a complex multination peacekeeping operation and coordination between the United States, Russia and France to be joint guarantors of a peace deal.

That is a big challenge, but one dwarfed by the prospect of a new catastrophic war in the Caucasus. The big powers could start by convening a peace conference in Minsk, Belarus, first called for in 1992, but never even attempted. That would send the message that the world finally takes this conflict seriously — before it is too late.

Thomas de Waal: Azerbaijan’s military potential will hardly allow Baku to start war

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thomas-de-waalThe resumption of large-scale hostilities in the Karabakh conflict zone poses a huge risk to the current Azerbaijani regime as it is not clear how all this will end for Baku, Thomas Waal, a senior associate with Carnegie Europe, said today while participating via video from London in a press conference in Yerevan.

According to Thomas de Waal, he does not believe that Azerbaijan has great military potential to start a war. Besides, it is unclear how the Russian side will react, the analyst said adding that although the situation is worsening in the Karabakh conflict zone, the Azerbaijani side openly uses mortars and rockets.

In his opinion, the situation may negatively impact a peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict.

The press service of Defense Ministry of Nagorno Karabakh Republic reported that around 5:30 pm on September 25 Azerbaijani troops fired shells from Turkish-made TR-107 rocket launcher at an Armenian position in the northeastern direction. 4 servicemen of the NKR Defense Army died. Another 16 servicemen received wounds and were hospitalized.

Source: Panorama.am

Turkey obtain another Genocide Denier “Thomas de Waal’s” first salvo of Turkish denialism.

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BY SETO BOYADJIAN, ESQ.

“A half-truth is a whole lie” – Yiddish proverb

Thomas-de-Waal-Genocide-denier

photo by gagrule.net

Thomas de Waal is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has penned an article, “The G-Word – The Armenian Massacre and the Politics of Genocide,” that will appear in the upcoming January-February 2015 issue of Foreign Affairs. This article is the precursor of his forthcoming book, “Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide.” Given the timing of the publication of this article and the book, it is obvious that Mr. de Waal opens the first salvo of Turkish denialism against the centennial of the Armenian Genocide.

Mr. de Waal is an analyst who has repeatedly focused on Armenian-Azerbaijani relations over the issue of the independent Republic of Nagorno Karabakh and on Armenian-Turkish relations over the issue of the Armenian Genocide. But he has a peculiar way of showing integrity in his approach to these two fundamental issues.

It is peculiar because, as an “expert” in conflict resolution, Mr. de Waal utilizes the old gimmick of double standard. On the issue of Nagorno Karabakh, he is an ardent proponent of changing the status quo – in favor of Azerbaijan and against Armenia. On the issue of the Armenian Genocide, he is an avid defender of maintaining the status quo – in favor of Turkey and against Armenia. As it is obvious, for Mr. de Waal the concept of justice is a variable in his approach to conflict resolution, depending on the identity of the party to the conflict.

Given his biased reputation on issues involving Armenia and Armenians, Mr. de Waal’s article did not strike any intellectual surprises on the side of justice and truth in conflict resolutions. Through this article, his entire endeavor amounts to a futile attempt at trivializing the Armenian Genocide in order to reach his proposed conclusion that it is time for Armenians to “bury their grandparents and receive an acknowledgment from the Turkish state of the terrible fate they suffered.”

We should look beyond this insulting “advice” and, instead, focus on the facts Mr. de Waal advances in support of his conclusion. We must bear in mind that his attempt is to transform the Armenian Genocide into a non-existing issue.

First, he claims that Armenians “discovered” Genocide in 1960s. According to Mr. De Waal, for decades the “event of the Great Catastrophe” were “more a matter of private grief than public record;” that they spent more effort “fighting the Soviet Union rather than Turkey;” and that only in the 1960s did they “seriously revive” the massacres “as a public political issue” by being inspired from the “Holocaust consciousness.”

In making these blatant statements Mr. de Waal conveniently overlooks the facts that as of the beginning of 1920s Armenians expressed their collective consciousness of the Catastrophe and voiced their claims for reparations. It is true that they did not refer to it as Genocide, as they could not, because that term came into existence in 1944, when Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin coined it based on the Ottoman massacres of Armenians. Until that time, Armenians presented themselves to the world and to Turkey as claimants of their national heritage destroyed by Ottoman Turkey and of their national homeland occupied by Turkey. As the world turned a blind eye on Armenian demands for justice, in the 1920s they organized their own “Nuremberg trials” by punishing the chief organizers and perpetrators of the Armenian massacres – namely, Talaat pasha, Enver pasha, Jemal Azmi, Behaeddin Shakir, Jivanshi Bey, and so on… At the same time, Armenians established the Delegation of the Republic of Armenia to officially pursue their claims for territorial and economic reparations from Turkey.

Contrary to Mr. de Waal’s claims, Armenians actively pursued their claims for justice since the 1920s; at the same time they remembered their grandparents and they will do so forever.

Second, Mr. de Waal displays his irritation over the use of the word “Genocide” in reference to the Armenian massacres. He credits Raphael Lemkin for inventing that terminology and lobbying the United Nations for the adoption of the 1948 Genocide Convention. However, he attempts to discredit Lemkin as a “problematic personality;” he criticizes the ambiguity of the Genocide Convention; and he deplores the exploitation of the word Genocide. With that he arrives at the notion that “The Armenian Diaspora saw the word as a perfect fit to describe what happened” to them, thereby helping “activate a new political movement…”

Mr. de Waal ignores the fact that even back in 1944, when Raphael Lemkin coined the term Genocide he invoked the Armenian case as a definitive example of Genocide in the 20th century. Lemkin described the crime of Genocide as the “systematic destruction of a whole national, racial or religious groups. The sort of thing that Hitler did to the Jews and the Turks did to the Armenians.”

Mr. de Waal also ignores the records that the United Nations enacted on December 11, 1946, its first resolution on Genocide, known as UN General Assembly Resolution 95(1). Thereafter, on December 9, 1948, it adopted the UN Genocide Convention. Both the resolution and the convention recognized the Armenian Genocide as the type of crime the United Nations intended to prevent by codifying the existing customary international rules and standards. Again, in 1948, the UN War Crimes Commission invoked the Armenian Genocide as being “precisely . . . one of the types of acts which the modern term ‘crimes against humanity’ is intended to cover as a precedent for the Nuremberg tribunals.” Thereafter, in 1985, the UN Commission on Human Rights report, entitled ‘Study of the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,’ invoked the Armenian massacres as an example of genocide. In the report, the UN commission stated, “The Nazi aberration has unfortunately not been the only case of genocide in the twentieth century. Among other examples, which can be cited as qualifying, are . . . the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916.”

As the official records stand, the Armenians did not see the word Genocide “as a perfect fit,” it was the United Nations who, on behalf of the world governments, established and declared through its resolutions and the Genocide Convention that genocidal acts of Ottoman Turkey against Armenians and of Nazi Germany against Jews are Genocide.

Third, according to Mr. de Waal, even if the word Genocide is granted to the Armenian massacres, the U.N. Genocide Convention does not have retroactive applicability. He claims, without identifying them that “Most international legal opinions are clear that the UN Genocide Convention carries no retroactive force and therefore could not be invoked to bring claims on dispossessed property.”

Again, Mr. de Waal makes blanket statements without any substantiation in fact or in law. And once again, he conveniently ignores the record, the law and the facts. The provisions of the Genocide Convention carry ex post facto applicability. They are indeed enforceable retroactively based on the following points:

1. The dual vocation of the Genocide Convention in preventing and punishing the perpetrator of the crime of Genocide provides the necessary basis for its retroactivity;

2. The retribution mandated by the Genocide Convention makes it retroactive, because, besides being condemned and punished for the crime of Genocide, the perpetrator of the crime is also not to be allowed to keep the fruits of the crime;

3. The Genocide Convention is declaratory of a pre-existing internationally recognized wrongful act, thereby giving rise to both state responsibility and individual penal liability. As such, the convention is not creating a new criminal law.

4. To provide solid legal grounds to the foregoing points, on November 26, 1968 the UN adopted the Convention on the Non-Applicability of the Statutory Limitation on War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. This convention eliminated any time bar on the crime of genocide. Thus, the provisions of the Genocide Convention are applicable to any crime of genocide, irrespective of the time of its commission.

Mr. de Waal makes many other unsubstantiated statements in his attempt at trivializing the Armenian Genocide. He twists facts, to serve his purpose, as if to confirm Mark Twain’s observation to “get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”

In the final analysis, Mr. de Waal’s entire attempt is based on uttering half-truths. And as the wise Yiddish proverb asserts, “A half-truth is a whole lie.”