Sociologist: Achieving peace in the South Caucasus does not depend on  Armenia and Azerbaijan

ArmInfo.Achieving peace in the South Caucasus does not in any way depend on Armenia or Azerbaijan. It depends on Turkey, Russia, Iran and other major geopolitical  players. Sociologist Karen Sargsyan expressed this opinion to ArmInfo.

"Against this background, all the latest fuss around delineating  borders and unblocking communications seems to be simply pointless.  If Moscow really wants to unblock our region, it needs to take one  single step - to restore relations with Georgia. Of course, the  latter implies the elimination of the occupation of Georgian  territories. After that, the Abkhazian section of the railway will  again connect Armenia and Azerbaijan with Russia. And the unblocking  of the Nakhchivan section through Julfa will make it possible to  establish a through railway communication with Iran, "he said.

In his opinion, at the same time, a completely different issue is the  presence of forces interested in laying transit routes through  Azerbaijan bypassing Georgia and with the aim of destroying the  current transit potential of Georgia. This is due to the current  controllability of Georgia by the West. Meanwhile, Russia and Turkey  are doing everything possible today in the direction of achieving a  common goal - ousting the West from the South Caucasus.

The sociologist explains the latter by the serious conflicts between  Erdogan's Turkey and the West, for which Turkey has long become a  watchdog on a NATO leash. The latter periodically lengthens and  shortens this leash based on Turkey's behavior and geopolitical  expediency. In his opinion, as regards, for example, bilateral  relations between the United States and Turkey, they periodically  turn into a negative balance.

Against this background, Turkey, according to Sargsyan, has no choice  but to negotiate with Russia. What the Turks are doing quite  successfully. As it has traditionally been done over the past two  hundred years in the South Caucasus within the framework of  agreements between Russia and Turkey. In this light, the sociologist  recalled that the main insurmountable contradictions between Russia  and Turkey were historically generated in the straits and in the  Balkans. In the conditional South Caucasus, Turks and Russians have  always found a common ground and divided the region as they please.  

"Against this background, we in Armenia still do not understand in  which direction the global geopolitical processes are developing. We  do not understand and do not want to understand what the world offers  us and, accordingly, what the world expects from us. Our authorities  do not have an appropriate analytical team that would be able to  develop an appropriate strategy, not only in foreign, but even in  domestic policy.  As a result, one assumption remains - all this work  on Armenia is being carried out outside of Armenia.  Hence the  results that I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation ",   summed up Sargsyan.