Remarks by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Turkey's probable role in the foundation of a Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform (KIIP) in various venues, including Ankara, Moscow and Tbilisi, were considered as Turkey's eagerness to place greater emphasis and importance on the Caucasus region. Close attention to this issue by experienced Turkish diplomat Ünal Çeviköz also proves Turkey's serious engagement with the initiative.
The first meeting regarding KIIP was held in Helsinki during a convention of the Council of Ministers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on Dec. 4, 2008. Azerbaijan, Turkey, the Russian Federation, Armenia and Georgia attended this meeting. A second meeting was scheduled to take place in Ankara in late January 2009. The undersecretaries of the countries involved will attend this meeting but whether the Georgian representation will join in or not still remains unclear.
What is Turkey trying to do? This is a relevant question considering how Turkey was opposed to the idea of a Caucasus stability pact back in 2000. Furthermore, the Southeast European Stability Pact, chosen as an example for the proposed KIIP, was dissolved because it was an ineffective organization. Regional initiatives trying to exclude the Russian Federation in the region have not worked out since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. With all this in mind, Turkey made a more flexible offer and advanced the idea of creating a platform rather than a pact, with the inclusion of the Russian Federation. However, Georgia's reluctance to join the platform and Russia's view of the platform as a basis reinforcing its sphere of influence in the southern Caucasus and Turkey's initiatives to bring the parties together give clues suggesting that a joint policy on this matter is still emerging.
Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and the Russian Federation seek to establish a cooperation platform by which they will look for opportunities to put emphasis on security, stability and development. KIIP aims to establish a stability and cooperation platform encompassing a managerial mechanism for the promotion of regional peace, joint security and economic cooperation. Moreover, KIIP was designed to serve as a supplemental body for existing regional mechanisms (i.e., the OSCE Minsk Group) to resolve regional disputes. KIIP will operate to reinvigorate the local economies of countries in the southern Caucasus, encourage development, cooperation and integration with the global world, promote free trade, support the private sector, protect the environment, realize international pipeline projects, restructure administrative organizations, ensure transparency, resolve refugee problems and maintain harmonization. The fulfillment of these goals will subsequently lead to the formation of a pact.
In parallel with KIIP, the idea of creating a Caucasian House that will serve as a platform for the meeting of Caucasian intellectuals and civil society representatives and the participation of Turkish intellectuals and civil society members in this initiative should be ensured. An initiative similar to the Balkan Club, created with the participation of former Balkan heads of state, may also be founded in the Caucasus. In this way windows of dialogue will be kept open so that potential conflicts can be addressed and prevented beforehand. The Eurasian Cooperation Action Plan, devised by Turkey and the Russian Federation on Nov. 6, 2001, might be reconsidered. These initiatives will promote economic, cultural and educational cooperation with Russia in the Eurasian region. Moreover, it will be proper to restructure the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC), founded under Turkey's leadership in 1992, to encompass political issues.
The biggest challenge for the pursuit of cooperation in the Caucasus is the inability of the social, political and economic institutions in the southern Caucasian republics to deal with regional problems (Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh). Guaranteeing territorial integrity and independence of these republics and the fulfillment of democratic and economic reform initiatives is very important. For this reason, aid and assistance to these countries are to ensure the restructuring of democratic institutions, the renewal of economic structures and the development of civil society as well as the rule of law.
The success of states in the southern Caucasus depends on the improvement of democracy and civil society and the integration of their economies with the world economy, including marketing of oil resources. Securing development, security and stability in a vast region stretching from the Mediterranean to China will facilitate the work done to take Central Asian and Caucasian oil and natural gas to international markets. A regional development program to be launched under the auspices of a regional peace program that could be initiated in line with KIIP, with the participation of the Russian Federation, will be realistic and useful. Regional problems in the Caucasus may only be resolved through the achievement of dialogue between the countries in the region.
