AN EFFECTIVE TRIANGLE

Turkey is Azerbaijan's strategic partner number one, and mutual visits of high-level officials are common practice in the history of relations between the two close allies. Therefore, it was not surprising that new Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglu arrived in Baku shortly after this experienced diplomat took up a high post in the interim government of Turkey. However, viewed in the context of regional and international processes, this visit allows us to expect certain progress in addressing the security issues of concern to Azerbaijan.

From Syria to power supplies

Meeting with F.Sinirlioglu, President Ilham Aliyev noted that today there is not a single area in which bilateral relations would not be developing successfully. According to him, cooperation between Azerbaijan and Turkey bears good fruit in all spheres including those of politics, economics, energy and culture. He underscored the importance of holding regular discussions related to the expansion of bilateral ties. The President expressed confidence that the visit of the Turkish Foreign Minister to Azerbaijan was a good opportunity to discuss bilateral and regional issues. In turn, F.Sinirlioglu reiterated Turkey's invitation to Azerbaijan to take part in the upcoming G20 meeting in Antalya.

Judging by the final briefing given by the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Turkey, the agenda of their talks essentially consisted of a set of issues of bilateral cooperation and regional problems. These are issues of regional security, and primarily the problem of the occupation of a fifth part of Azerbaijan's territory. F.Sinirlioglu called the Armenian occupation of the Azerbaijani territory a "blatant violation of international law and a major threat to regional security". The minister noted that Turkey was making every effort to encourage the activity of the OSCE Minsk Group to bring about the speediest change in the status quo. "First of all, Armenia itself should be interested in resolving the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict. I do not know for how long Yerevan will be able to protract this conflict. If Armenia wishes stability and development, it must abandon the position of 'freezing the conflict'," the Turkish diplomat said.

As usual, the topic of energy cooperation within the framework of pipeline projects designed for exports of Azerbaijani energy resources to Turkey and further to the West occupied a prominent place in the negotiations. The recent terrorist attack on a section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline carried out by militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), who have intensified their activity in Turkey, has added relevance to this topic. F.Sinirlioglu also said that Turkey is taking measures to ensure the security of the BTC [Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline] and TANAP [Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline] projects: "There is a possibility that terrorists will target all the projects in Turkey including the important economic projects. The security of projects passing through Turkey, such as the BTC oil pipeline and TANAP, is very important. To this end, we are taking security measures".

The ministers also discussed other issues within the scope of bilateral and regional cooperation in the field of politics, economy and security. Furthermore, the foreign ministers did not ignore new challenges to regional stability. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told reporters that at the negotiations in Baku, the sides discussed the crisis in Syria and its consequences, especially the problem of the influx of refugees from the country to Europe via Turkey. "This is a very serious matter. Azerbaijan understands it very well because we have our own refugees and displaced people," the minister said, noting that about two million Syrian refugees have already found shelter in Turkey. Mammadyarov called for a speedy solution to the conflict in Syria and the return of migrants to their homes.

The problem of Syrian refugees is no less sharp for Azerbaijan.

Turkey, with certain sections of its border with Syria being poorly controlled, is a convenient transit route for thousands of people from many countries of the world who infiltrate into the Syrian territory to take part in the fighting on one or another side of the civil war. Various sources report that there are several hundreds of Azerbaijani citizens among such volunteers, many of whom joined the Islamic State militants that are committing outrages in almost the entire Middle East. Azerbaijan is well aware of the threat such persons may pose in case they return home, therefore co-ordination of activity geared towards blocking the transit channel between Baku and Ankara has been in place for a long time and continues to be an important component of bilateral cooperation in the sphere of regional security.

In addition, Baku has for many years been raising with international organizations the problem of illegal settlement of Syrian refugees of Armenian origin in the lands occupied by Armenia. The very fact of trying to artificially change the demographic situation in the sovereign, albeit occupied Azerbaijani lands by populating them with aliens is criminal. However, there is more to that. Speaking at a press conference in Baku, Armenian opposition member and Intranational Liberation Move-ment leader Vahan Martirosyan, who asked for political asylum in Azerbaijan, revealed interesting information that bore evidence of an even greater scope of threat of the Syrian refugee problem to the national security of the country. According to the Armenian defector, Yerevan is forming militant groups comprised of Armenian refugees from Syria and Lebanon and deploying them in Nagornyy Karabakh occupied by Armenia. "As a result of the conflict in the Middle East, 15,000-20,000 Syrian and Lebanese Armenians returned to their historic homeland. Some of them subsequently went back, others moved on to Europe, but some were sent to Karabakh. There is reliable information that these refugees included former members of terrorist organizations, which were organized into small groups in Yerevan and sent to Karabakh," the Armenian oppositionist said.

Thus, the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Turkey had a lot to discuss with respect to the Syrian crisis.

When interests coincide

Meanwhile, after Baku, F.Sinirli-oglu immediately went to Sochi to meet his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov. This fact, especially in the light of Lavrov's recent visit to Baku, allowed analysts to suggest that a new format is possibly being created, which provides for establishing - if not a strategic triangle, then at least effective interaction between Azerbaijan, Russia and Turkey in solving common problems. Despite the differences - sometimes radical ones - in the positions of the parties on a number of issues of regional security and energy policy, the three countries have something in common. To start with, all three countries are going through a bad stretch in their relations with the West, and Europe in particular, and this encourages them to seek ways of strengthening cooperation within their region. "Azerbaijan is faced with a very subjective and biased attitude of the EU. It came to the point where the Europeans would adopt - hurriedly and in haste - certain resolutions that accuse us of those sins in which they are mired themselves. Russia is in an even more difficult situation, given the sanctions applied against it. Turkey pursues an independent foreign policy, and this also annoys certain forces in the West. So I think we have common values that, of course, make us closer to each other. There are certain issues that are close to all three countries. I think it is not by accident that Sinirlioglu met with Lavrov. The move should be viewed against the background of the events in our region," political scientist Fikrat Sadiqov told R+.

The economic interests of the three countries are not so close, but everybody is interested in stability in the region. The emergence of new hotbeds of war hostilities and the infiltration of Syrian refugees, as well as various extremists under their guise, into the South Caucasus could become a headache for all the countries in the region. All this, from the standpoint of Baku's interests, can increase motivation of the leading states in the region to solve problems of concern to Azerbaijan.

F.Sinirlioglu is known as one of the ideologists and conductors of the failed concept of "football diplomacy" aimed at the normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations, therefore he is like no one else aware of futile attempts to address the issue of reconciliation of Armenians and Turks without linkage to the Karabakh settlement. Baku emphasized the existence of a direct link between these two issues from the very beginning. Now Azerbaijan can use the new situation in the region and Turkey's opportunities to encourage Russia to more effective measures in establishing peace in the South Caucasus. The visits of the foreign ministers of Russia and Turkey in Baku, which came one after another, have shown that the interests of the stakeholders coincide and that Azerbaijan has something to offer in return.