Eurasianism and the Concept of Central Caucaso-Asia

Rethinking Central Eurasia 45
Ardahan, Artvin, Van, Igdyr, and Kars) and the northwestern parts of Iran
(the provinces or ostanha of Eastern Azerbaijan, Ardabil, Gilan, Zanjan,
Qazvin, Hamadan, and Western Azerbaijan). This division is based on the
fact that the Turkish and Iranian regions have been populated by Caucasian
peoples from time immemorial. For many centuries prior to the Russian
conquests they belonged, together with the other Caucasian peoples, to the
same ethnocultural and socioeconomic area. This means that these areas can
be described as Caucasian on the same grounds that the Northern Caucasus
of Russia is. Geographically, the mentioned regions of Turkey and Iran (as
well as Armenia, which is described as a Caucasian state) are found at the
same distance from the Greater Caucasus range and partly fill the space of
the Smaller Caucasus range.
The above suggests that the Caucasian region consists not of two (the
Northern and Southern Caucasus) parts, as the international academic
community commonly believes, but of three parts: the Central Caucasus
(made up of three independent states –Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia);
the Northern Caucasus (made up of the Russian Federation’s autonomous
units bordering on the Caucasus); and the Southern Caucasus, which covers
the Turkish provinces bordering on Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia (the
Southwestern Caucasus), and northwestern ostanha of Iran (the southeastern
Caucasus).
If we proceed from the specific features of the region’s history, Ismailov’s
conception fully reflects the Caucasian current geopolitical realities. 137 The
region has developed into a meeting place for all sorts of geopolitical and
economic interests, 138 while the Central Caucasus accumulates the entire
range of regional problems. 139
137
Roin Metreveli, The Caucasian Civilization in the Context of Globalization (Stockholm:
CA&CC Press, 2009).
138
For example, Revaz Gachechiladze, “Geopolitics in the South Caucasus: Local and
External Players,” Geopolitics, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2002), pp. 113-138; Roin Metreveli, “Kavkaz
na rubezhe tysiachiletiy” [The Caucasus at the Turn of the Millennium] Caucasica.
The Journal of Caucasian Studies, Vol. 4 (2001), pp. 81-86; Kenneth S. Yalowitz and
Svante Cornell, “The Critical but Perilous Caucasus,” Orbis, A Journal of World Affairs,
Vol. 48, No. 1 (2004), pp. 105-116.
139
For example, Elkhan Nuriyev, The South Caucasus at the Crossroads: Conflicts, Caspian
Oil and Great Power Politics (Berlin: LIT, 2007).