Locked in Ethnic and Territorial Disputes

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The collapse of Soviet power in the southern Caucasus and central Asia in the 1990s opened up a political space for the re-emergence of the nationalist ideology known as pan-Turkism.

This political movement, which originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, had as its goal the political union of all Turkic-speaking peoples in the Ottoman lands, the Crimea and other parts of tsarist Russia, eastern Turkestan in western China, and parts of Iran and Afghanistan.

Some 170 million people speak a Turkic language, with the largest, Turkish, used by about 85 million people.

The Turkic world encompasses a huge portion of southeastern Europe and central Asia. Today there are six independent Turkic countries: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as Turkey itself.

There are also several Turkic national entities in the Russian Federation, including the Altai Republic, Bashkortostan, Chuvashia, Tatarstan, and Tuva.

The Crimean Tatars inhabit the Ukrainian peninsula that borders the Black Sea, and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of western China is home to the Uighurs, another Turkic people.

A main "fault line" between the Turkic Muslim and pro-Russian Christian peoples has always run through the southern Caucasus.

The nation of Armenia has been at odds with its Muslim Turkic neighbours for centuries and hence welcomed Russian rule in the region.

It has suffered whenever the Russians and Turks were at war.

During World War I, the Armenians within the Turkish Ottoman Empire were accused of aiding Russia, and in 1915 upwards of one million of them were massacred.

Between 1918 and 1920, Armenia and neighbouring Azerbaijan were sovereign countries, and fought an indecisive war over territory. But both soon became part of the new Communist-ruled Soviet Union.

During the Soviet period, Armenia and Azerbaijan were full Soviet republics. But the 4,400-square- kilometre area known as Nagorno-Karabakh, though inhabited mainly by Armenians, became an autonomous oblast (region) within the borders of Azerbaijan, cut off from Armenia proper.

By the late 1980s, as Soviet rule in the Caucasus disintegrated, and the two countries once again became independent states, old enmities resurfaced.

There were massacres of Armenians in the Azeri capital, Baku, and killings of Azeris in Yerevan in Armenia.

In 1991, Azerbaijan unilaterally abolished the autonomous status of Nagorno-Karabakh. In response, the Armenians in the enclave declared their independence.

Full-scale fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan ensued, and by the time a cease-fire ended major hostilities in 1994, the Armenians were in control of almost all of Nagorno-Karabakh as well as a considerable amount of Azerbaijani territory outside the enclave.

More than 30,000 people were killed in the fighting from 1992 to 1994. As many as 230,000 Armenians from Azerbaijan and 800,000 Azeris from Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh were displaced as a result of the conflict.

The war also drew in the two major powers in the region, Russia and Turkey. In 1993, as Armenia's forces were routing the Azeris, Turkey demanded that the Armenians pull out of Azerbaijani territory, and thousands of Turkish troops were sent to the border between Turkey and Armenia. Russian in response warned Turkey against any military involvement.

Though there has been little fighting since 1994, Armenia and Azerbaijan are still technically at war and the two countries have no formal diplomatic relations.

Turkey imposed a blockade on Armenia in 1993, resulting in a total shutdown of land and air communications between the two countries; they also have no formal diplomatic relations.

In May 2009 Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the Azeri parliament that Turkey and Azerbaijan were "one nation with two states." He added that there would be no normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations unless "the occupation of Azerbaijani territory ends."

Armenia's Defence Minister Seyran Ohanian in turn stated in January 2010 that defence fortifications have been beefed up significantly in recent years. "We are maintaining the balance of forces vis-à-vis the Azerbaijani armed forces."

The Nagorno-Karabakh dispute is one of several "frozen" conflicts in the cultural zone separating the Turkic peoples of the Caucasus from their neighbours, and Nagorno-Karabakh remains a de facto independent republic of some 140,000 people, protected by Armenia.