The Caspian Sea as Battleground

Second Karabakh War as Cause or Consequence?

James M. Dorsey

Populated at the time by fluent Hebrew speakers, the Israel desk of Armenia’s for­eign ministry waited back in 1991 — in the immediate wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union — for a phone call that never came. The ministry was convinced that Israel, with whom Armenia shared an experience of genocide, were natural allies. The min­istry waited in vain. Israel never made the call. That shared experience could not compete with Armenia’s Turkic nemesis, Azerbaijan, with which it was at war over Nagorno‑Karabakh, a majority ethnic‑Armenian enclave on Azerbaijani territory.

“The calculation was simple. Azerbaijan has three strategic assets that Israel is interested in: Muslims, oil, and several thousand Jews. All Armenia has to offer is at best sev­eral hundred Jews,” said an Israeli official at the time.

Azerbaijan had one more asset: close political, security, and en­ergy ties to Turkey, which was supporting it in its hostilities with Armenia. As a result, the pro‑Israel lobby and American Jewish orga­nizations with longstanding ties to Turkey for years helped Ankara de­feat proposals in the U.S. Congress to commemorate the 1915 mass murder of Armenians.

That has changed in recent years with strains between Turkey and Israel becoming more strident over issues such as the status of East Jerusalem, held by Israeli since 1967’s Six Day War, the Palestinian question, Iran, political Islam, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s touting of implicitly antisemitic conspiracy theories.

What has not changed is Israel’s close ties to Azerbaijan that puts it on the same side as Turkey in renewed animosity between Armenia and Azerbaijan following the former’s defeat in the Second Karabakh War. This is a reflection of the Caspian basin’s inextricable links to the greater Middle East’s myriad conflicts and the fluid and fragile nature of regional alliances, partnerships, and animosities across the Eurasian landmass. Writing in the previous issue of Baku Dialogues, Svante Cornell emphasized this important point, noting the “gradual merger of the geopolitics of the South Caucasus and the Middle East” and going so far as to say that Azerbaijan, in particular, is “more closely connected to Middle Eastern dynamics than it has been in two centuries.”

Turkey, which has opportunistic partnerships with Russia and Iran, both littoral Caspian states that…

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