Field Reports

Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev was the last of the three presidents of the Customs Union member states – Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus – to react to Vladimir Putin’s recent article, published in one of Russia’s most read newspapers, about the prospects of creating a full-blown economic entity modeled after the European Union.

The return of Armenia’s second President Robert Kocharyan to national politics is unlikely to affect the parliamentary elections in May 2012, since Kocharyan is officially a non-partisan and does not enjoy the support of any political party. However, the question of Kocharyan’s potential return to politics has attracted significant attention in the Armenian press in the context of pre-election developments in Russia. When the decision that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will most likely replace Dmitry Medvedev as Russian President was announced on September 24, many Armenian media outlets argued that a similar arrangement is possible in Armenia, due to the country’s close ties with Russia. The argument is largely based on the view that Putin would prefer Kocharyan as Armenian president over the incumbent Serzh Sargsyan, who will run for his second term in 2013.

On October 13, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed into law a new bill regulating the activities of religious organizations, both domestic and international. This law, whose adoption by the Parliament’s lower and upper chambers took only a few weeks, has quickly become a source of serious controversy, with its detractors constantly referring to the discriminatory effect of its several clauses, in a country with a multitude of religious confessions.

In written statements released on October 7 and 12, Georgian tycoon and philanthropist Bidzina Ivanishvili publicly expressed his intention to win the 2012 parliamentary elections by an absolute majority. Although the Civil Registry Agency launched procedures for revoking the Georgian citizenship of the billionaire-turned-politician, depriving him the right to establish and finance a political party, Ivanishvili’s announced ambitions triggered vast speculation on a probable redesign of Georgia’s political landscape.

The approach adopted by the Turkish government – setting resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as a precondition for normalizing its relations with Armenia – has not produced the expected result. Quite the contrary, such an approach induced Armenia’s government to adopt a more confrontational stance, which has been emphasized by President Serzh Sargsyan’s statements at various forums, including the UN General Assembly, about recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence as the only feasible solution, as well as by the big military parade in Yerevan on 21 September – Armenia’s Independence Day.

While tensions between Turkey and Israel are increasing, political analysts speculate about Baku’s ability to maintain friendly relations with both countries at the same time. Tensions between Turkey and Israel have been on the rise since May 2010, when Israeli troops boarded a ship headed to Gaza. As Turkey’s leaders intensify efforts to isolate Israel internationally, Turkish Ambassador Hulusi Kilic has called on “brother Azerbaijan” to “reconsider its relations” with Israel.  

On September 22, the U.S. Congress adopted a decision to abolish sanctions on provision of military aid to Uzbekistan. The sanctions were imposed in 2004 due to a worsening situation in press freedom and repression of civil society in the country. After the Andijan events in 2005, relations between Tashkent and Washington cooled even further. Nevertheless, Uzbekistan recently reasserted its strategic importance in its relations with the U.S. and has come to play an important role in the so called Northern Distribution Network (NDN), which supplies NATO troops in Afghanistan. In light of the worsened relations between U.S. and Pakistan, it seems that the Obama administration plans to increase Uzbekistan’s role in the NDN, in spite of continued protests from international and local human rights activists calling for careful attention to Uzbekistan’s poor situation in terms of human rights and freedoms.

Since early September, Kazakhstan’s domestic politics have focused on a language controversy stemming from the publication of the so-called “Letter of 138,” in which a number of politicians, cultural workers and associative leaders called for an amendment of Article 7 of Kazakhstan’s constitution. The current reading of its second clause says that “the Russian language is officially used in state organs and local government authorities along with the Kazakh language.” According to the initiator of this demarche, a former Member of Parliament and a famous poet, Mukhtar Shakhanov, many Kazakhstanis are confused about the interpretation of this article, sometimes believing that both Russian and Kazakh are official languages in the country, whereas the constitution reserves this privilege only for Kazakh. In an interview to journalists given in the wake of the publication of “Letter of 138”, Shakhanov even referred to the unwillingness of some Kazakhstanis to properly study Kazakh, as they may wrongly think that “their President is Putin and their official language is Russian”.

Over the course of three days, from September 16 to September 18, the tenth annual International Investment Forum was held in Sochi on Russia’s Black Sea coast. This year, the forum was primarily devoted to projects related to the 2014 Winter Olympics, but the signing of a new agreement concerning Moscow’s ambitious ski resort project in the North Caucasus also attracted some attention. At the first day of the forum, state owned French financial institution Caisse des Depots et Consignations and Russian state company Resorts of the North Caucasus agreed on a new framework for their joint venture assigned to the realization of the resort project. The French party committed to provide more than US$ 14 billion within one year and in the optimistic final draft for the 2012 federal budget that was presented on September 20, an additional US$ 1 billion was allotted to the company Resorts of the North Caucasus.

A joint declaration adopted on September 30 at the EU Eastern Partnership summit envisages the launch of negotiations on a deep and comprehensive trade agreement (DCFTA) between the EU and Georgia by the end of this year. The document was approved in Warsaw by the leaders of EU member states and five of the Eastern Partnership countries – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. The document does not specify a date when such talks could start, but underlines the need for “fulfillment of a number of remaining key recommendations.”