SUCCESSFUL AZERI ELECTIONS WITH TURKISH HELP

 

PM Tayyip Erdogan, with his pre-warnings and advice based on Turkish experience, played an active part in helping President Ilham Aliyev in leaving behind the 6 November general elections in Azerbaijan with the least disturbances and criticisms possible, despite the months long campaign prepared and staged by the “Soros-funds-backed” activists of the “Orange Revolutions” of the Caucuses and Eurasia. For the significance of this achievement for Eurasia developments and the world’s energy strategies, please read the article below.

 

The 6 November general election in Azerbaijan was a further achievement of Turkish foreign policy and a step forward in its efforts to strike a good balance between the EU centered Atlantic policy and the Moscow centered Eurasia policy with its budding SCO rapidly maturing into an Asian NATO, if not yet the EU.

The Six of the 21^st century grows fast with experience of the previous Six

The European Integration which came into existence thanks to the wise De Gaulle-Adenauer cooperation shortly after the end of WW II, was for decades called “The Six” after its six founder members -France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux until the UK, with two partners, joined in 1962, despite President De Gaulle’s several vetoes to keep away the “Trojan Horse” from this masterpiece of the postwar period. Turkey’s interest in the Six was as prompt as that of Greece and dates back to 1959 when they both became associate members of the EEC, the then official title of today’s European Union.

With much less publicity and consequently much less public notice in especially the western world, another equally important “Six” is today active in the international arena, the SCO, “The Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” with remarkable achievements in its first few years in the direction of its goals. Half of its founder members, Russia, China and Kazakhstan are at least as strong in almost all respects as the other’s big trio- France, Germany and Italy.

After years of meticulous preparatory work, the European Six, the EEC, began to function on January 1^st 1958, along with its energy community, EURATOM. Their forerunner, the European Coal and Steel Community, had already been established as the third European Community. Despite its traditional reluctance to admit new members, the EU today is a colossal and deep rooted organization with 25 full members and four candidates for accession including Turkey. It is now a global power centre, quite a match for the world’s only superpower, the USA, in world affairs.

The Asian Six of the new millennium also had a long preparatory period by functioning for years under the title, “The Shanghai Five” and quickly turned into a global power centre after its official establishment on June 15^th, 2001, by taking advantage of the European integration experience. Also instrumental in this quick development was its low profile cooperation with a non-member western democracy, Turkey, who was alarmed by the disappearance of the world balances with the downfall of the Soviet system as from 1989 and the adventurous policies of the Bush Administration with its BME (Broader Middle East) policy for the region where Turkey is centrally located. (For details please see the last issue of Pulse.) The 6 November general election in Azerbaijan with Turkey’s role in it is a typical recent example of the healthy part Turkey has been playing in the shaping of the Eurasian Power Centre around the SCO.

SCO has already made an impact on Bush’s BME policy

The initial American definition of “talk shop” for the SCO is no more realistic than Chou En-Lai’s definition of “paper tiger” for the United States in the early Maoist periods of China. The SCO’s latest summit in Moscow on 26-27 October yielded fresh proofs of this fact with new blows to the BME policy’s main goal of isolating Russia and China by surrounding them with American military bases in neighbouring countries.

In less than five years since its official establishment, the SCO has covered a long distance in fouling Washington’s policy of having pro-American governments in Eurasia with U.S. military bases. The Shanghai centered policies, on the other hand, are based on keeping Eurasia free of interference from outside powers and the sixth member of the organization, Uzbekistan, has already evicted an American base in accordance with the previous Summit’s resolutions last July. Another member, Kyrgyzstan, is waiting for an opportune moment to follow suit and Azerbaijan may follow from a distance if the Soros funds continue to be showered on the Azeri opposition for an “Orange Revolution” there, after Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

The SCO has four observer-members today (India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia) in addition to its six full members, but it is reluctant to give them accession or recruit new members or observers. General Tuncer Kilinc, in his statement summed up in Pulse’s last issue, was critical of this reluctance on the part of the Shanghai initiative and pressed for the rapid elimination of the differences among its current and potential members, primarily the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. In retrospect, it is seen that what the SCO has been doing in its short history is exactly what General Kilinc has advised. Indeed, the organization has been devoting almost all its energy on this point and what’s more with considerable success. The disputes of the last century between Moscow and Beijing, the strife between Beijing and New Delhi, the wars between India and Pakistan, with China and Russia siding on opposed fronts, are today, by and large, the events of the past, thanks to the SCO’s shrewd observations and efforts. Instead the SCO is now bent on keeping out external interferences, merely meaning American hegemony in Eurasia. In doing so it appreciates that it needs time for becoming an alliance capable of tackling Eurasian questions or challenging the United States militarily. Instead, it prefers to pave the way for solving many common problems with a joint work of the regional countries, primarily member countries. In practice, this involves building Eurasian transport corridors, erecting energy routes far exceeding the needs of the member countries or their associates, making sure the countries’ economies complement, rather than severely compete with one another. That is exactly what the SCO did at its latest Moscow Summit a couple of weeks ago and what brought President Putin to Turkey along with PM Berlusconi of Italy on Thursday (17^th). At the summit in Moscow, SCO members agreed to fulfill a program of multilateral trade and economic cooperation by 2020. The program includes ambitious multi-billion-dollar projects such as jointly constructing hydroelectric plants, upgrading highways, laying out fiber-optic communications networks, oil and natural gas exploration and pipeline construction -a total of 127 joint projects to be realized as joint ventures with financing and training from China and Russia. Upon completion of these projects for which the two big members seem determined to be ultra active in view of the Bush administration’s threat looming over Tehran and especially Damascus which is a much easier target, a strong power centre will emerge for Washington to be reckoned with before it launches into any tragic move in Eurasia.

Meanwhile, Turkey is playing a considerable part in this historic formation with such roles as it plays in the elections of the region such as the Azerbaijan one or warnings to Damascus as Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul gave to President Assad last Wednesday (16^th) with a surprise visit to Damascus, much to Washington’s annoyance, because these Turkish initiatives cut down the ground from under the Americans feet for their military intentions.  

Turkish delegation applauds Azerbaijan election to the U.S. disapproval

PM Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Baku a few months ago was concerned more with advising President Aliyev about conducting democratic elections worthy of international rules for the sake of peace and security in the country, as well as the Eurasian region, than securing oil and natural gas concessions for Turkey from this energy rich country. And this sincere warning (coming from a fraternal country that exerts great efforts not to be a tool of any plots against Azerbaijan like the one PM Tansu Ciller had attempted in early 1995 about killing President Haidar Aliyev with President Demirel’s fouling it) made an enormous impact on the Baku Administration which took stringent strides for free and fair elections on 6 November. Despite this wise move on the part of the Aliyev Administration, however, it was obvious that it was not possible to establish all the democratic rules of western democracies such as independent radio, TV broadcasts for all parties and candidates or the elimination of all the relics of the previous periods of autocratic rule.

There were about 1500 candidates for the 6 November elections and almost that many international observers (to be exact 1541 candidates reduced from the original 2200 and 1486 international observers including 58 from Turkey). Observers from Russia, a crowded team from the pro-Moscow CIS (The Commonwealth of Independent States), Iran and Turkey hailed the result and the “free and fair conduct” at the elections. A prominent member of the ruling party, Nevzat Yalcintas (AKP-Istanbul), who attended the elections as a member of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) team, applauded the “truly transparent nature” of the Azeri elections and said to Milliyet (November 10^th), “The elections were held with the free will of the people, aloof from oppression. Everything was transparent. Even the ballot boxes were transparent. We even had the opportunity to see how votes were cast.” The “Marmara Group” of the Turkish observers’ team went as far as expressing the wish that the Azerbaijan elections would set a precedent to Turkey. One of the Azeri opposition leaders, Isa Gamber appealed to PM Erdogan, “Please do not send here as observers the people called the Marmara Group which has nothing to do with the real Turkish people.”

With or without the influence of such criticisms and Washington’s role, the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s (MFA’s) official stance was a bit different from the above and it sided with the USA’s “belief” that “the November 6 parliamentary elections were an improvement over previous elections in some areas,” but that some of the international standards for elections were not observed, as the MFA spokesman Namik Tan put it. He also called for the rectification of these defects before the election process is over.

President Aliyev’s office announced the dismissal of two regional governors accused of interfering with the elections, and prosecutors said four election officials from local commissions had been detained on suspicion of falsifying balloting results and abuse of office. One of the three leading opposition leaders, Ali Kerimli won a legislative seat as a result of these rectifications, but still the ruling power retained 63 of the 124 seats in Parliament, the last one being vacant as it is the Upper Karabagh seat under Armenian occupation. The 46% participation in the elections was below the international standards, but quite common in the new states established after the collapse of the Soviet system. The opposition’s attempts to stage massive “Orange Revolution” rallies after the elections simply flopped as they gathered about 10-15 thousand demonstrators on 9 November, as against the opposition’s initial claims of hundreds of thousands. The rally the government side called the following day was quite a match for the opposition’s “orange” activism.

Now that the “orange-revolutions” part of Washington’s BME policy has begun to be defeated one after the other following its initial achievements in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, the United States has to find other means than the so- called Soros funds and these revolutions which Indian diplomacy calls, “another franchised revolution of Washington”.

TPAO active in Azerbaijan oil and especially natural gas basins

According to the Turkish Petroleum Corporation`s, (TPAO’s) activity report, TPAO continues activities in 3 projects in Azerbaijan, namely Azeri-Chirag-Gunesli, Shan Deniz and Alov by participating in consortiums with the world’s giant oil companies. TPAO ranks the 3^rd row both in terms of its investment and amount of reserves amongst the other international companies investing in Azerbaijan. TPAO is participating with a 6.53% share in the BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) project.

The natural gas produced from the Shah Deniz field will start to flow to the Turkey-Georgia border in Autumn 2006 with the realization of the South Caucasus Natural Gas Pipeline (SCP) project.

With this project, the natural gas will be transported to Europe from Turkey via a Turkey-Greece pipeline and for the first time, the natural gas to Europe will be transported by the pipeline from a different route other than the Russian route. Therefore, the East-West Energy Corridor shall be realized by means of these two projects. The TPAO report continues:

“Our Corporation is determined to enhance its international portfolio by taking an effective role in the near geography and strengthen its identity. In this respect, business development activities in Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa have been accelerated. Production activities in Kazakhstan on the KTB project in which TPAO is a participant with 49% are ongoing. The amount of oil TPAO produced from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan projects has reached 20,000 bbl/day. This amount is expected to reach domestic production level in 2005.

“Turkey’s first underground natural gas storage project, Silivri Natural Gas Storage Project, with a total of 1.6 million m³ capacity is planned for start-up in early 2006. This amount constitutes approximately 8% of Turkey’s consumption.

“In 2004, our total domestic and international oil production was realized with a daily average of 54,000 barrels whereas the total natural gas production was annually 430 million m³.”

President Putin’s and PM Berlusconi’s visit to Turkey last Thursday was a milestone on incorporating these bilateral Turkish-Azeri energy projects with those of the Eurasian plans around Moscow and the SCO as well as Italy and the EU. The big question about the success of these initiatives is what the Americans will do to undermine them and how successful they will be. uras@ada.net.tr – November 20^th, 2005