Armenia customs union plan will change the situation in the South Caucasus - INTERVIEW

Armenia's accession to the Customs Union (CU) is perceived ambiguously in Azerbaijan. ANN.Az asked the expert Vugar Khalilov to bring some clarity to this issue.

- What does Armenia's accession to the Customs Union and Russian investments of hundreds of millions of dollars mean to Azerbaijan?

- It will not directly impact Azerbaijan and its steady development. But the geopolitical situation in the South Caucasus will change. Without CU Armenia depended on the opening of the borders with Turkey. That will not bother Yerevan now, because Russian supplies and support will be provided. We should expect stagnation in the negotiations between Ankara and Yerevan on the opening of common borders in exchange for constructivism and liberation of the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. According to unofficial information and unconfirmed reports, Ankara was ready to open its borders in exchange for the release of two districts of Azerbaijan. It is possible that this issue will be removed from the agenda or in any way will be reformatted, as Turkey also needs open borders.

- But in any case it is unlikely that Ankara will open the borders without consulting Azerbaijan?

It all depends on the hardness of the position of the Turkish government and on the force of the Western pressure on Ankara in order to force it to unlock the border with Armenia. It is no longer a secret that, despite its refusal to ratify the protocols signed in Switzerland in 2009, Turkey was in the full swing process, which was supposed to create the political, economic and social conditions for the opening of the borders in 2015. In Ankara and Istanbul there are various active European and American NGOs that apply all the forces contributing to this process. For the West it was very important to weaken Russia's influence in the South Caucasus. To this end, Turkey and Armenia face pressure from the West. Now there is a different configuration. Russia has agreed with Armenia, which was to be expected, especially after Moscow's diplomatic victory in Ukraine.

- How can the situation develop further? What can Ankara do in this situation?

Obviously, the presence of Russia in Armenia will be expanded. It may happen that the West and the U.S. in particular will force Turkey to unconditionally open its borders with Armenia for competition with Russia. And it will be in the hands of Moscow, as Turkey would be in a very scrupulous situation: on the one hand, under pressure from the West it should open the borders, and on the other hand, it cannot ignore Azerbaijan. Tensions will arise, backed by the U.S. and Europe. Moscow will have to wait for the right moment when it could intervene as an arbitrator. It resembles a chess game in which everything must be calculated several moves ahead. It is possible that the foreign ministers of Turkey in the past and the present - Abdullah Gul and Ahmed Davutoglu - still had to make diplomatic visits not to Yerevan, but to Moscow, as long as Russia still has a real and more effective leverage on the geopolitical situation in the region.

ANN.Az