On the south Caucasus

The first observation was about the behavior of the students of these countries, who acted in harmony and good will. The efforts of Galatasaray University’s students to assure a serene atmosphere were remarkably successful. Of course it’s not possible to say that the student’s attentive, friendly and coherent attitudes were always shared by their country’s government workers, who tried to publicize their countries’ official positions.

In the workshops the positions of the EU and NATO concerning today’s global threats and their ramifications for this particular region was the recurrent subject. The speaker from NATO emphasized that the threats originate from social instabilities, lack of democracy and economic problems. The EU representative preferred to explain in detail about the police missions undertaken by the EU. This seemed like a shift in the roles. We heard about the astonishing success (!) of the EU in Kosovo, Afghanistan, the Far East and Africa, but nothing about the EU’s approach on the south Caucasus.

The audience insisted on two main issues; the first about the future of Kosovo. Those who asked questions with reproving attitude about this issue were generally from Russia. The number of questions about Kosovo at a conference about the south Caucasus made us wonder if some people envisioned enacting the same “solution” in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The second important question was about the possible accession of the Caucasus countries to the EU. The people from that region have no doubt of Turkey’s future EU membership. The answer to that question was vague. The participants from the region seemed pretty sure that one day they will become NATO members, but they were not sure about EU membership. Even if the opinion about NATO is quite exaggerated, their concerns about the EU’s lack of plans for the region are fully justified. Moreover the fact that they trust NATO more is understandable, as such is always the case in former communist countries.

It was important to be able to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh issue with Azerbaijani and Armenian participants under the mediation of an international relations student from Turkey. The speaker from Armenia was a NGO member and the speaker from Azerbaijan was a civil servant. Even if we can’t talk of a real tension, the atmosphere was unpleasant, as the audience noticed. Even if all the participants from the region had insisted that Turkey is one of the parts of this conflict, the Turkish listeners managed not to take sides. Students witnessed a case study on peacemaking and had the opportunity to think about the meaning of the disputes originating from national egos.

We also noticed that during the whole conference, which took many hours, two key words were never used. These were “Russia” and “democratization.” This absence, which is problematic not only for the Caucasian states but also for Turkey, made us understand that these two words will in fact be the main determining words of the future world system.