When Boris Yeltsin proclaimed the "five
principles of Russia's Caucasus policy" at the Kislovodsk meeting with
the Transcaucasian heads of state and leaders of the republics of the North
Caucasus on June 3, 1996, he pointed out that cooperation and stability
in the Caucasus were a must for Russia's normal development. According
to his view, cooperation in the region "under a strong joint control" could
only be done by way of strengthening "federalism," and therefore Russia
"intended to continue to carry out its peacekeeping functions" to maintain
this process.(1)
In fact, while Yeltsin was proposing this cooperation concept based on Russian hegemonic leadership, he was representing the majority view in Russia which believes that the best way to unite and inspire Russians today is the unification of Russia's peoples for the purpose of its revival as a "great power".(2) It is not an unwarranted conclusion to link this phenomenon to the imperial explanations of some politicians and elements of the old communist apparatus. Russia appears determined to take initiatives to maintain its 'big brother' role in the region and also to take every precaution to meet any challenges from other regional powers to prevent its hegemonic policies.
During the early years of the post-Communist period, while Iran's "pariah" position generally excluded it from filling the vacuum in Caucasian and Central Asian politics left by Russia's "temporary departure", the US and its western allies quickly appealed to their NATO ally Turkey to represent the secular and democratic role model for the newly emerging states. With its cultural and ethnic ties to the region's peoples, Turkey was prepared psychopolitically for the role, and rushed to fill it.
President Turgut Ozal, who was personally interested in Turkic and Islamic ties, traveled to the area many times and signed numerous agreements. Having strengthened his personal friendship with President Bush by supporting America in the Gulf War, he helped to build up the image of an emerging "Turkic world" stretching from the Adriatic to the Great Wall". Until 1993 Turkey took an escalating role in the Caucasus and Central Asia as the "westernchoice".
As Russian authorities began recovering from the destabilizing affects of the rapid change, and realized there was little to be gained in Eastern Europe, they turned their attentions to the south as Peter the Great had done centuries before. At that time, the Russian Empire's challenge to the south brought a long front stretching from the Balkans to the Caucasus, a "competition line" along which it met with the Ottoman Empire. During that period before the time of nation states and through thirteen major wars, this competition line determined the character of conflict in Turkish-Russian relations. It also created a culture of skepticism regenerated by domestic conservative elements which even today poisons the chances for constructive cooperation. With Moscow's renewed perception of Turkey as a major threat to Russian interests in the Caucasus and Central Asia, the Kremlin began conducting a unilateral and exclusionary policy at practically every point in its relations with Turkey, indicating a defection from their promises of cooperation.(3) Given the history of competition, such a defection was not unexpected.
After mid-1993 Russia's unilateralism in its relations with Turkey would be very evident. Russian authorities charged that the Minsk Group which includes Turkey and the US aims simply to sabotage Russian interests. Aleksei Arbatov, Russia's director of the Center for Geopolitical and Military Forecasts, has described Turkey as a military adversary of the near future.(5) Long before these academic analyses, radical Russian politicians mentioned "wiping out Turkey in the process of re-creating the Russian Empire".(6) It was even said that the 1992 Agreement on Friendship and Cooperation between Russia and Turkey was the result of rumors leaked that Turkey was planning to intervene in Azerbaijan.8 Russia's unilateralism was a natural output of its Caucasian policy which saw "any attempts to encircle its southern borders" as a direct threat to its security, and led a unilateral, Russian-dominated joint action, and hegemonic stability in the region.(8)
The separatist movement in Chechnya, attempts to exclude Russians from Azerbaijani Caspian oil reserves, and the involvement of "third" parties, mainly Turkey, Iran, and multinational corporations backed by western powers, presented a threat to Russia's integrative policies towards the Caucasus. Since regional interests were categorized as being of vital interest to national security, the response would include every means available. Turkish attempts to broaden its presence in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia10, and Russian apprehension that Turkey might now fill the role of "big brother"(10) meant that Turkey fell into this threat category.
While Russia was desperately trying to crush the separatist movement in Chechnya to secure its interests in the Caucasus, the impression that Turkey was somehow supporting Chechen guerrillas provided a perfect counterattack platform to pacify Turkey not only in the Chechen issue but in overall Turkish foreign policy towards Caucasian oil issues and Central Asia. This platform was the "Kurdish card".
Long before the current post-Soviet rivalry began, there was concern about Russian/Soviet involvement in the Kurdish issue. An article from a July 1946 issue of Foreign Affairs stated that the Kurdish independence movement was considered the most dangerous of all Middle East troubles because of the support it got from Soviet Russia, and that the Kurds' "grievances, ammunition, and fighting nature could make them players in a Soviet game".(11)
The PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) became active in the early 1970s as a Marxist-Leninist organization, and was a natural target for Soviet agitation which Turkey, as a NATO country, attracted. After the 1980 military coup in Turkey, the PKK survived as the only anti-establishment terrorist organization in the country, this time as a rural insurgency movement beginning to concentrate on Kurdish nationalism along with its Marxist ideology. Since then Turkey has spent approximately $6-7 billion annually in this struggle which has claimed the lives of more than 10,000 Kurdish and Turkish civilians.
Most of the terrorist activity has occurred in southeastern Turkey, through which the projected Baku-Ceyhan pipeline will run. A Kurdish threat against a proposed pipeline was discussed in August 1995 when Ahmad Dere, the Kurdistan National Liberation Front spokesman in the CIS, spoke of the Kurdish leadership's intention to obstruct construction of a pipeline for shipping Caspian oil across Turkey.(12) Thus Russia discovered the "Kurdish Card", which could be used against Turkey's rising influence in CIS countries.
The first sign of playing the Kurdish card
came with a conference entitled "The History of Kurdistan" held in Moscow
in February 1994, and organized by the Kurdistan Committee and the Kurdistan
Liberation Front, both of which were affiliated with the PKK.(13)
After the Turkish press discovered that the Russian Ministry of Nationalities
and Regional Policy was the co-organizer of the conference(14),
the Turkish Foreign Ministry sent a protest to the Russian Ambassador,
and received a response denying all allegations. It went on to say
that they would not allow similar conferences to be held in the future,
but warned that Turkey should be very careful not to play similar trump
cards, such as a Turkic-Muslim Chechen republic.(15) A report
published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta some time before the incident, suggested
that Moscow might consider using the PKK to exert pressure on the Turkish
leadership as a counterweight to Ankara's alleged support for Chechen leader
Dudayev.(16) It was also reported by the Turkish press that
the Russian Foreign Ministry had started to work on formulating a clear
policy on the Kurdish problem in early 1994.(17)
While Kurdish groups from Turkey were exploiting
the growing rift between Turkey and Russia, a convention of Kurdish organizations
from the CIS ended on October 31, 1994 in Moscow with a decision to establish
a "Kurdish Union," with the PKK as its nucleus. The PKK had chaired
the three-day convention. It was noteworthy that Moscow refrained from
any action against the gathering despite the fact that the organizers themselves
acknowledged the PKK link.
Turkish Foreign Ministry Undersecretary, Ozdem Sandberk, flew to Moscow to discuss the matter, but again the Russians denied the PKK link. During the same period that the representative of Kurdistan's National Liberation Front in the CIS was urging the Russian president to act as a "mediator and peacemaker between the Kurdish movement and Turkey, he was calling the Caspian pipeline project a "manifestation of pan-Turkic plans".
At the end of 1994, Turkey was still treating the Chechnya issue as an internal matter of the Russian Federation, but as the Russians began to intensify the attack in Chechnya and to perform indiscriminate air raids resulting in high civilian casualties, Turkey faced the dilemma of whether or not to speak out. Moscow chose this time to host PKK officials in an effort to draw attention to Turkey's sympathy for the Chechens and win more support from influential sources in Russia for the separatist Kurdish movement by opening a Moscow bureau. The Russian official response to the Turkish Ambassador in Moscow was that the PKK bureau in Moscow was opened for "Kurdish cultural activities only".
By early 1995, the PKK-Chechnya circle was becoming more apparent. The Russian Ambassador to Ankara presented Turkish officials with evidence of a flow of weapons to Chechnya via Turkish territory. As the Russians complained about the matter, two former Kurdish members of the Turkish parliament who had fled the country to found the Kurdish parliament in exile, came to Moscow to pursue their goals. The Russian Foreign Ministry again denied any affiliation of Russian officials with these attempts, while simultaneously allowing the "Kurdish House", a Kurdish center under PKK control, to open in Moscow.
Public opinion in Russia was becoming more sensitive about the alleged Chechnya-Kurdish connection, and began blaming the West for being softer on Turkish activities in Kurdistan than on Russian ones in Chechnya due to overlapping Turkish and Western interests on the 'project of the century' on Caspian oil".(17) As Turkey began to recognize the seriousness of the situation and of PKK dominance in "cultural activities" in Moscow, officials were sent to Russia, and a "Protocol to Prevent Terrorism" was signed. Moscow would forbid the PKK in Russia.(20)
This first agreement marked the initiation of a cycle of PKK or Kurdish-related activities in Russia followed by Turkish protests, and Russian denials of any official responsibility but tacit approval of their continuation. Turkey's extreme sensitivity on the issue meant that subsequent negotiations would eventually end with oral or written agreements for Turkey's not getting involved in the Caucasus in general, and Chechnya in particular. Russia had found Turkey's most vulnerable side.
At the end of January 1995, Russian officials visiting Turkey repeated that Russia would not allow the Kurdish House and the PKK in Russia, in turn Turkey appeared to agree to taking a low profile regarding Russian efforts to reassert its presence in the Caucasus.(21)
Within this atmosphere, Russia started to storm Chechnya, and Turkey made only empty and weak protests. Russia even conducted joint military maneuvers with Armenia near the Turkish border, demonstrating the seriousness of its intentions in the Transcaucasus.(22) On the other side, Turkey was trying to fold up its six-week-old cross-border operation against PKK separatists in Northern Iraq, with little protest from Russia.(23)
Turkey and Russia reiterated on July 21, 1995 that they would not tolerate separatist movements threatening the other's territorial integrity.(24) While Turkish officials were assuring that the Chechen organizations in Turkey would not be allowed to engage in activities(25), Albert Chernyshev, former Russian Ambassador to Turkey and later Deputy Foreign Minister, having said previously that Russia considered the Kurdish problem to be Ankara's "internal affair"(26), was saying, "we must understand each other. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones". Chernyshev might well have been describing the hub of Turkish-Russian relations with a realistic approach. This speech also marked the fact that Russia's Kurdish card was operating still, and would be one of the strongest leverages of Russian foreign policy strategists to pacify Turkey and to thwart Turkish desires to become a regional power in the Caucasus.
Towards the end of 1995, Russia would play the card further. Members of the Russian Duma agreed to host the third international conference of the Kurdistan Parliament in exile. The Russian executive branch blamed the Duma, but Turkey remained unconvinced, and the act was publicly considered as one of "Russian treachery".(27) Russia was also ignoring the Conventional Forces Reduction Agreement in which it had agreed to reduce its forces on NATO's northern and southern flanks. Turkey's already intimidated position could not meet this challenge of Russian unilateralism.
In 1996 Russia applied to the Kurdish card repeatedly, placing Turkey in a defensive position which was often at the expense of the dynamism of its policies towards the Caucasus and Central Asia. The year witnessed heavy diplomatic traffic to repair the wounded relations between the two countries.
The January 1996 seizure of the Avrasya sea ferry by the pro-Chechen terrorists escalated already tense communications between the parties. Yeltsin showed his dissatisfaction with the handling of the crisis, claiming that Turkey had delayed liberating the hostages in order to keep international attention on the Chechnya issue(28). In March, the Undersecretary of the Turkish Foreign Ministry conducted official talks in Moscow calling for a "new era in ties", and stated that the Russians had prevented the setting up on Russian soil of a radio station operated by the PKK.(29) The Russians, having secured the early Azerbaijani oil flow through the northern route as opposed to the Turkish route, were saying that they were satisfied with Turkey's position on the Chechen crisis.(30) Despite the rhetoric, Russia appeared determined to use the PKK card. At a meeting with the PKK and Aleksandr Nevzorov, a department head of the ministerial-level Internal Intelligence Service, Russian government officials openly declared that the PKK was not a terrorist organization, and that Russia should use the Kurdish issue to pressure Turkey.(31) In July, the Turkish Parliament Speaker was told by the Russian Prime Minister that he did not have specific information about PKK activities, but he would have the matter investigated.(32)
Shortly thereafter, Russian and Turkish journalists discovered a Kurdish camp, administered and sponsored by the PKK. This camp had been used in part as a clinic to treat wounded PKK members and was located within a three hour drive of the Kremlin. The correspondent of the Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda ironically mentioned the similarity between this incident and the "Chechen guerrillas lick[ing] their wounds with the help of the Crimean Turks."
Despite Turkey's continued passive position on Chechnya and the Caucasus, Russia had become less conciliatory, deeming it unnecessary even to verbally support Turkey against the PKK. Turkish plans to set up a security zone in northern Iraq to prevent PKK attacks received stern warnings from Moscow.
In October 1996 Turkish President Demirel met with Russian Premier Chernomyrdin following meetings of the Black Sea Cooperation Organization. Chechnya and the PKK were the major topics of discussion at this high level meeting. Once again Chernomyrdin promised the administration would stop any "political" PKK activities in Russia. So far, an intimidated Turkish foreign policy caused by the cycle has helped Russia to gain time for dealing with the Chechnya problem, and to obtain one of the two early oil routes for Caspian oil. When Viktor Ustinov, Chairman of the Committee for Geopolitics of the State Duma of Russia called on the Kurds and Russians for "joint work" to create an independent Kurdish state, it was clear that the separatist PKK organization was playing a sizable role in frustrating practical realization of the pipeline project's "Mediterranean option".
In December, Deputy Prime Minister Ciller paid a visit to Moscow to discuss PKK/Chechen affairs with the hope of normalizing relations. Again the Russians made mention of arms shipments from Turkey to Chechnya, a charge which Turkey denied. In turn Turkey brought up the PKK issue and was met with firm denials. The visit seems destined to become another in the cycle of failed diplomatic rhetoric.
The skeptical and chaotic character of five
centuries of Turkish-Russian relations continues to prevail and to promote
defection from any cooperation in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In the
current era, the syndrome of fear of being divided inherited from the collapse
of the Ottoman Empire, forces Turkey to try and stop the Russians from
playing the Kurdish card at any cost. To do so they must stay away from
Russia's hegemonic policies in the Turkic world of the Caucasus and Central
Asia. There is no doubt that Russia has played the Kurdish card effectively,
and the challenge of the PKK has severely restricted Turkey's ability to
play a strong role not only in the Caucasus and Central Asia but also in
the Balkans, in particular the Bosnian conflict. The Kurdish card
has given Russia unprecedented leverage in its relations with Turkey. Unless
Turkey is able to find a solution to its PKK problem, it seems likely that
Russia will continue to use the Kurdish card to secure its strategic interests.