On July 30, the Armenian envoy for dialogue with Turkey, Ruben Rubinian, and the Turkish representative for dialogue with Armenia, Serdar Kiliç, each from their respective countries, crossed the bridge over the Aras River. The purpose was to celebrate the fifth meeting of the normalization process between the two countries, but perhaps the most symbolic: the meeting place was a border crossing that has been closed for three decades, between two countries without full diplomatic relations.
Until recently, buildings on both sides of the border languished unused, but on the Armenian side, reconstruction and modernization work has already been completed and authorities hope to have it operational again in the not-too-distant future. The reason is that Yerevan attaches great importance to this crossing as part of a larger strategy: to turn its country – now blocked to the east and west by its neighbours’ border closures – into a confluence of routes that encourages trade and exchange, thus helping to cement a peace that has been precarious for decades in this region.
There was a time when the South Caucasus was truly a crossroads between Asia and Europe. Then came nationalist conflicts, then the Cold War and the Iron Curtain, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, wars, ethnic cleansing and the closing of borders between states that, only a few years earlier, had been part of the same country.
“Our region needs lasting peace, a situation where all countries in the region live with open borders, are connected by economic, political and cultural ties, accumulate experience and a tradition of solving all problems through diplomatic means and dialogue,” writes Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in the brochure of the project “Crossroads of Peace” (Peace Crossroads) sent to the governments of the region for evaluation. Already in the presentation, made a few months ago in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, Pashinyan summed it up thus: “It will be very difficult to build peace without roads.”
Open border crossings
Armenia’s plan involves opening two border crossings with Turkey and five on its border with Azerbaijan, which would join the three existing ones on the northern border with Georgia and the crossing to Iran in the south; in addition to restoring Soviet-era railways and building new roads so that, via Armenia, the main cities of the region (from Tabriz to Tbilisi, from Baku to Yerevan and Kars) would be connected and access to the ports of the Black Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean would be facilitated. “This project would shorten distances and lower transport prices,” explains an official Armenian source.
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On paper, everything is a win-win situation, but local quarrels sometimes prevent us from looking to the future. The main obstacle is Azerbaijan, which, having defeated Armenia and reconquered the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh (from which it expelled more than 100,000 Armenians), feels strong enough to impose conditions.
“For the project to be viable, real peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan is necessary,” says Benjamin Poghosian, an analyst at the Applied Policy Research Institute (APRI) in Yerevan. This should be achieved through a final peace treaty negotiated by the two countries. But, according to Poghosian, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is not in favour of this: “He needs an external enemy and a national idea to unite the population under the leadership of his family. Between 2003 and 2023, that idea was to reclaim Nagorno-Karabakh, now he needs a new idea and has started using the discourse that the Azeris should return to their ancestral lands in West Azerbaijan, i.e. the current territory of Armenia.”
So far, the Baku government has demanded that Yerevan implement the so-called Zangezur Corridor, a section through southern Armenia that would link Azerbaijan with its exclave of Nakhchivan, to which both countries committed in a ceasefire agreement brokered by Russia to end the 2020 war. However, as planned, the corridor remained under the control of the Russian FSB border service and implied a surrender of sovereignty that was difficult to swallow for the Armenian government, which is already being questioned by the more nationalist opposition due to its search for a peace agreement with Azerbaijan. In Yerevan they feel that, since Baku did not comply with the rest of the measures contemplated in the 2020 agreement, the provision on the corridor should not be binding on Armenia either. So they propose to include a road through the south of the country that would fulfill the same connectivity functions, but under the control of Armenian institutions.
However, in early August, there was a positive development in this regard. Azerbaijan announced that it would for the time being drop its demands on the controversial corridor. “We do not want to complicate the process of negotiating a peace agreement,” Azerbaijan’s special envoy Elchin Amirbekov said after meetings in the United States.
Russia’s opposition
Iran and Georgia, Armenian sources say, are in favour of the Armenian proposal, even though they have so far benefited from the blockade by building communication routes between Azerbaijan and Turkey that bypass Armenia through their territory. Even Turkey, a staunch ally of Azerbaijan due to its cultural and linguistic ties, is in favour, as Ankara is ready to support all kinds of projects that offer business to its builders and mean that their products reach other countries faster and cheaper. The problem is that Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government will not complete its normalisation with Armenia unless Azerbaijan gives its approval: already in 2009, when both countries were about to resume diplomatic relations, pressure from Aliyev ruined the negotiations.
“If there is some positive pressure from outside towards Azerbaijan and Turkey, and some kind of project is offered as a reward, they might accept the project,” the Armenian official source said. In fact, the European Union and the United States have warmly welcomed the project. Crossroads of Peace.
Russia, however, is not so sure, as its leaders have made public their displeasure at Armenia’s attempts to leave its sphere of influence. In recent months, Pashinyan’s government has ordered Moscow to withdraw the military it had at Yerevan airport and on the border with Azerbaijan, although there are still Russian soldiers patrolling the borders with Turkey and Iran.
In contrast, the Kremlin is trying to get closer to Baku, which has been an important partner of Washington in the region and a key supplier of hydrocarbons to the EU for the past three decades. This week, during an official visit to Azerbaijan, Russian President Vladimir Putin showed his sympathy with Aliyev. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov took the opportunity to attack “the Armenian leadership” and accuse it of blocking peace negotiations by failing to implement the Zangezur corridor, something that was harshly responded to by the Armenian Foreign Ministry: “The statement is not only regrettable, but it calls into question Russia’s constructive participation in the process of normalizing relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.” “Moscow is opposed to our project, because more connectivity and fewer conflicts means fewer possibilities for Russia to exert its control in the region,” the Armenian source concludes.
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