Xenophon Paper 2 pdf - ICBSS

counter-offensive, brought about new territorial and political realities in favour of the Armenian
side. As a sign of solidarity with Azerbaijan, however, Turkey then closed its borders with
Armenia. To this day, Turkey refuses to establish diplomatic ties with Armenia. It continues
to impose a blockade - running counter to international norms, including BSEC principles -
against Armenia. In view of international law, this is a form of undeclared war. Turkey also
conditions the reopening of the Armenian-Turkish border and normalisation of relations on
the reversal, by Armenia, of post-war realities, including Karabakh’s return to Azerbaijan and
the carrying out of the Azeri-Turkish demands. Turkey’s other precondition for Armenia is
for the latter to stop its campaign for the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide.
Azerbaijan similarly continued to condition cooperation with Armenia, in any domain, on the
officially- formulated argument of ‘cooperation after the regulation of the conflict’.
In Georgia up until the mid-1990s, the conflicts in Abkhazia and Northern Ossetia, the
overall territorial crisis, Tbilisi’s lack of control of the entire country, and Georgia’s
essentially becoming a ‘failed’ state, gave little hope for effective regional cooperation.
Also, throughout the BSEC’s establishment and motivation into a complete regional
organisation, a considerable number of countries and people—from the Balkans to the
Caucasus—who had been liberated from the empirical ‘plague’ of 20 th Century
communism, took the path toward decolonisation, independent statehood, and the
difficult but rewarding process of democratisation. Naturally, under such regional
conditions, Armenia and other countries that were pulled into this war could not think
about cooperation in the areas stipulated by the BSEC founding documents. Instead,
economic cooperation was to be restrained by emerging security issues. As such,
Armenia’s cooperation with its two immediate neighbours - Turkey and Azerbaijan -
could not be realised in many domains (e.g. trade and economic development; banking
and finance; communication; energy; transport; agriculture and agricultural industry;
healthcare and pharmacy; environment protection; tourism; science and technology;
exchange of statistical data and economic information; cooperation among duty-imposing
(customs) and other border authorities; human relations; and the fight against organised
crime, narcotics, trade in illegal arms and radioactive material, all acts of terrorism, and
illegal immigration - which, in 1999, had undergone a major revision pursuant to the
BSEC Charter 5 ) for the basic reason that many of those domains required unbroken
communication and close collaboration among authorities. As such, Armenia-Turkish
and Armenia-Azeri relations did not enjoy the necessary level of trust and collaboration. 6
5 BSEC (1998), ‘Charter of the Organisation of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation’, Yalta, 5 June.
6 Armenia’s ambassador to the BSEC is the only diplomatic representative of Armenia in the territory of Turkey.
X E N O P H O N P A P E R no 2 17