Caucasus and Central Asia expert: Turkey doesn't give up opportunity to play "its own game" in Caucasus

How do you assess the current state of the Turkey-U.S. relations in the light of latest developments?

Turkish-American relations are quite smooth and are of partnership nature, with the exception of the powerful work of the Armenian lobby on "genocide" and the weakness of the Turkish lobby in the U.S. to counteract this. The Turks understand that the U.S. needs their assistance, especially in matters of security in the region and in the energy sector. Another question is that U.S strategic interests in the Caucasus are not so significant like that of Turkey, which has recently been trying to regain some lost political and economic weight.

Turkey sees the United States as a partner profitable in every respect while not giving up its own initiative and opportunity to play “its own game" in the Caucasus.

In your opinion, to what degree the United States is likely to recognize the "Armenian genocide"? Will President Obama do what Armenians expect him to do on on April 24?

The are still debates regarding the term “genocide” in the U.S. The Armenian lobby in America is able to competently to influence members of the White House administration and members of Congress. So, the solution can be unpleasant for Turkey. But I do not think that the American president would be interested in maintaining confrontation over this issue as showed his recent meeting with the Turkish and Armenian leaders in Washington, where he urged them to cooperate, rather than continuing squabbles about what happened almost a hundred years ago.

How do you assess Iran’s effort to contribute to settlement of the Karabakh conflict?

Today Iran is in a very difficult situation, and any peaceful activities, including an attempt to act as peacemaker and mediator in Karabakh conflict resolution, can bring some positive results. In reality, Tehran has no leverage to resolve this long-running conflict and is not expected to have one in future. Moreover, Iran, in my opinion, is not interested in resolving this conflict in favor of Azerbaijan.

At the same time, Tehran wants Azerbaijan not to assist U.S. in the event of a sharp aggravation of relations between the two countries. To achieve this, Tehran put forward some initiatives on Karabakh problem, a sensitive issue for Azerbaijan as, but is doing very little in practice.  


T. Teymur
/Today.Az/