Turkish-Azerbaijani Relations. One Nation – Two States?

While both countries share a border no longer than eleven kilometers long, Turkey and Azerbaijan are much more than neighbors. The words of Azerbaijan’s former president, Heydar Aliyev, still resonate, thus making them a fitting subtitle for this book: Aliyev referred to ‘one nation, two states’. But the question added to the title is indeed necessary. As the contributors to this volume demonstrate, this seemingly clear expression of the two countries’ closeness betrays the multiple nuances and conflicts that defines their relationship in practice. The statement refers back to the distant past, to genetic and linguistic classifications, but it ignores different historical experiences. By way of introduction to its main theme, the book opens with two more general chapters. This is followed by a series of chapters where each contributor looks at both countries through a different prism: Eurasia, South Caucasus trilateralism, economics and business, and also religion. A conclusion by Norman A. Graham, a distinguished scholar of international relations who has written widely on Central Asia and Eastern Europe, ties the different themes together.

Murad Ismayilov’s opening chapter on ‘Azerbaijan and Turkey in Pursuit of Identity and Survival’ is especially convincing. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, both states found themselves searching for their identity: Turkey’s ‘role as a […] “regional gendarme”’ became ‘increasingly redundant’ (2), while Azerbaijan was in search of its ‘post-colonial, post-Soviet identity’ (1). Ismayilov identifies Georgia, Iran, Israel, and ‘the West’ as the key players in the regional context, while thematically the main focus was on energy politics and the endogenous processes of interaction. By looking at these parameters, Ismayilov is able to highlight the common challenges that bound the two countries together and yet, at the same time, also forced them apart. His analysis serves as a useful point of departure for a discussion of their relationship in general. While Armenia is conspicuously absent from this first chapter, Elnur Soltanov’s second, more general chapter, ‘Turkish-Azerbaijani Relations. Brothers in Arms, or Brothers in the Dark?’, focuses on Nagorno-Karabakh. He uses the case of Nagorno-Karabakh and the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict to build on the themes discussed in the previous chapter with the aim of understanding—not least historically—how the reaction to common stimuli impacted the relationship between Turkey and Azerbaijan.

Chapters Three and Four address broader ideologies. Emre Ers̨en provides a stimulating analysis of the role of Azerbaijan in the Turkish discourse on ‘Eurasia’ (Avrasya), a concept which ‘has grown vastly popular among the Turkish political, military, and intellectual circles’ (54) in their attempt to find a new orientation for their country after the Cold War. As Ersen shows, the focus of Eurasia in the Turkish political imagination shifted from the Turkic world to the Caucasus and the Caspian basin and then to the Muslim world at large. In all three cases, Azerbaijan’s role has been prominent, whether viewed through the prism of Turkism, anti-imperialism, or Islamic solidarity. Since Turkey was seen as ‘bridging and influencing different regions, continents, and civilizations’ and thus ascribed the leading role in this bilateral relationship, Azerbaijan was left playing a ‘supporting role’, perhaps even close to the status of a colony (67).

Going beyond the bilateral relationship between Turkey and Azerbaijan, in Chapter Four, Michael H. Cecire focuses on Turkey’s ‘zero problems’ policy, ostensibly a continuation of Kemal Atatürk’s ‘Peace at Home, Peace in the World’, which intended to emphasize, at least in words, if not in actions, the need to pacify instead of instigate conflict. The growing importance of the Caucasus as a contributor to global energy supply as well as in the context of Euro-Atlantic integration, claims Cecire, has led to increased trilateral cooperation in the Southern Caucasus, also involving Georgia.

Taking the Azeri perspective, Elkin Nurmammadov explores the political and economic background to the Turkey–Azerbaijan trade and investment relationship. His analysis can, in turn, also serve as a background to a number of policy recommendations: that Azerbaijan should join the World Trade Organisation (WTO), reform its customs system, or put more effort into human capital development. Both Turkey and Azerbaijan should, according to Nurmammadov, invest more in infrastructural development, sign a free trade agreement (if Azerbaijan does not join the WTO), and consider establishing joint ventures to invest in third countries. Nurmammadov’s recommendations are based less on hypotheses developed using quantitative methods than on insights gleaned from interviews ‘with government officials, academics, and representatives of the Turkish business and diplomatic community in Azerbaijan’ (90).

In Chapter Six, Pınar Bedirhanoğlu studies Turkish business people in Azerbaijan using interviews conducted in August 2011. His analysis shows that their choice of Baku as the location of their business activities derives from cultural and political affinities as much as from economic incentives. However, the chapter as a whole largely focuses on corruption. Seen as a ‘political system rather than an issue reduced to bribery’, Bedirhanoğlu demonstrates how business people navigate cultural and economic imperatives to conduct business in post-independence Azerbaijan.

Sofie Bedford focuses on Azerbaijan’s adoption of ‘Turkish Islam’ after decades of state atheism under Soviet rule. She provides a pertinent analysis of how the issue of religion became politicized, given that Turkish Islam was possibly seen as non-political but at the same time deeply Turkish. Despite the success of movements such as the, essentially Sunni, Gülen movement in Shiite Azerbaijan, the leaders of such movements were persecuted as the parameters of Azerbaijan and Turkey’s bilateral relationship shifted. As Bedford demonstrates, the possible explanations are endless: The persecution of Gülenists could be seen as showing support for Erdogan’s oppression of them at home or, conversely, as a subtle retaliation against Turkey for moving closer to Armenia. Either way, Bedford’s chapter is important for contextualizing the religious developments in Azerbaijan, often analyzed as an internal affair.

Overall, the book addresses an impressive, if not always coherently presented, set of themes. Norman A. Graham’s conclusion is instrumental in tying all the threads together. This is an important volume that illuminates the ideological as well as the pragmatic aspects of two nations that have been declared to be ‘one’, characterized by complex historical and contemporary entanglements. The book’s main strength is its emphasis on each country’s interests in the post-Cold War context. And here it not only draws on the official ideologies. The use of interviews in the chapters dealing with the economy has engendered some very interesting insights on ideology from the perspective of people who are not in charge of politics, bilateral relations, or, indeed, ideology.