One egg in one basket.

Turkish and Northern Cyprus Turkish flags seen from the Greek side., originally uploaded by nazarian.

Today I came across the Haykakan Zhamanak issue of January 20, 2007. It had an interesting editorial and an accompanying article on page three as well which dealt with an issue I have pondered about a lot during the last few years.

The foreign policy of Armenia has had one issue since the independence - the Karabagh issue. Another issue was added when Mr. Kocharian became the president - the international recognition of Metz Yeghern (Genocide). Nikol Pashinian goes on to articulate that all the actions of Azerbaijan are interpreted by the Armenian government through the prism of these two bedrocks of the foreign policy principles. But Azerbaijan has moved on and Karabagh issue is not a bedrock in foreign policy but a means, or a pipeline, to gain access to the ears of the world's movers and shakers, i.e. the president of the United States, or European powers, and thus resolve such 'trivial' issues as access to foreign markets for their goods while isolating Armenia from the world.

I have to admit that they have been quite successful so far as does Pashinian. He also has a suggestion to prevent the next project that will isolate Armenia - the Kars-Tbilisi-Baku railway construction - make sure that the parties involved realize that Armenia will make sure that every possible option is used to prevent the construction.

There is a recent precedent to what Azerbaijan is trying to accomplish. Often, Karabagh is compared with the situation with the Turkish occupation of the Northern Cyprus. In 1974, after years of internal conflict, the Turkish community established an autonomous entity in Northern Cyprus with the help of invading Turkish military. They have a de-facto independent state with their own military, economy and other sectors of a proper independent state. Yet they are isolated and mired in poverty (relative to their Greek counterparts). That has been the result of the successive Cypriot governments' efforts to keep them cut off from the world while continuing negotiations for the last 32 years! Nothing has been accomplished through these negotiations except to keep the Turks distracted. All their efforts have been focused on achieving independence while the Greek Cypriots have developed and prospered. When the EU and the UN demanded for a referendum to take place for the Northern Cyprus be admitted into the EU a few years ago, the Greek Cypriots slapped the Turks with NO while the Turks wholeheartedly said YES.

There is a big lesson to be learned here. Armenia does not want to be what the Turkish Cypriots are now. The Northern Cypriots are a little luckier - they live on an island so the transportation is not blockaded, and they have a powerful backer - Turkey is the only country that has recognized their independence besides Pakistan. They are effectively in the backyard gutter of Europe and Middle East.

Anyway, here is the www.hzh.am article in Armenian:

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   -         :   ,          ,    ,                 : , ,        ,        ,    ` :   `          ,  ,      : ,   ,    ,      ,       .  -       ,     :       ,         `   -     -  ,      : , ,  ,           ,         :     ` ,            :      :   , ,    , `    :       .   ,            ,      : ,  ,   ,     1998   : ,   ,     ,         . ,      : ,  ,    ,           ,   ,        `     ,     :            :  , ,       :                       ,        ,               :         ,                    ,       :           ,       :

 3

    

       ,     ,  ,            ,          : ,           :      ,    , , 10  ,            ,    :           ,        ,      ,          :      .  ,    (      ):          ,   ,  ,  `        : ,  ,    - :       . - , - , - ,  .    ,            :           ,  ,          ,        ,     :    - `    ,    :       ,         ,       :         ,     ()  :   ,         :    ,    ,          ,           ,     ,     ,      :  ,    ,     ,  ,    ,           : ,    ,     ,      ,     -   ,       -       :  -        : ` ,         ,           ,  , ,  ,       ,  ,    `    ( , 1997-    -   ,      ):  ,      ,          .  ,  :      ,        ,       ,     ,         :   ,        .        ,           `   , , ,  ,   ,   :  ,      `    ,      ,     ,   :

  , -  ,   ,       :   ,      ,       :     ,      ,    ,       ,      : 1998- -       ,         ,      ,    :   ,     `  ,        :     , ,       ,    ,               ,     :         ( ,  ),      ,     :         ,   -      :    ,  ` : ,    :        :  ,   ,                : ,       ,  ,    9-        :     ,            ,         :  1988-        ,      :     ,   - ,            ,      :        ,        :      . -      (  )       ,      ,    , -, -, -, - :           ,  ,       :   ,  ,       , -    :          ,   -         :  ,   ,        ,      ,    :

 