Tag Archives: international relations

Armenia accuses Kremlin of imperiallism

JULY 12 2017 (The Bulletin) — Armenian lawmakers accused the Kremlin of outdated imperialism after its parliament passed a law which said that citizens of other Eurasian Union countries — Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia — could only work as commercial drivers in Russia if their countries recognised Russian as an official language. The only Eurasian Union country that doesn’t is Armenia.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

EU promises to help Uzbekistan

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JULY 18 2017 (The Bulletin) — At their first high-level meeting with Uzbek officials since the death of Islam Karimov in September, EU officials praised the reform path that the country has taken over the past 10 months and promised to help reform Uzbekistan’s agricultural sector with a 21.5m euro grant to water research institutes. Karimov was considered an autocrat who refused to relax his grip on both power and the lives of ordinary people. Since his death, Uzbekistan has reformed various laws and increased personal freedoms.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

China-Armenia trade rises

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JULY 22 2017 (The Bulletin) — Trade turnover between Armenia and China in the first five months of the year was 28.4% higher in 2017, at $194.9m, than during the same period in 2016, media reported. The rise shows the impact of China’s “Belt and Road” policy, a drive to spread its influence through trade across Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Georgia teams up with Ukraine for EU push

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JULY 18 2017 (The Bulletin) — At a meeting in Tbilisi, Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko said that they would coordinate their efforts to join the European Union. Georgia and Ukraine both won the right for their citizens to travel around the EU Schengen Zone earlier this year for 30 days without a visa. They have both said that their ultimate ambition is to join the EU.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Chinese arrest Kazakhs in the West

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JULY 7 2017 (The Bulletin) — The authorities in China have been detaining Kazakhs in an apparent crackdown on ethnic minorities, angering relatives in Kazakhstan, media reported. There have been reports from China for the past month that the authorities were targeting ethnic minorities, including Kazakhs, living in the Xinjiang region of western China.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

IRFC head visits Uzbekistan for first time since 1925

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JULY 3 2017 (The Bulletin) — After visits to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, Tadateru Konoe, President of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), said that both countries had inspired him and given him “a great deal of hope” because of the way that different ethnic groups worked together. Mr Konoe was the first head of the IFRC to visit Uzbekistan since 1925 when the Red Crescent Society of Uzbekistan was set up.IRF

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

Comment: Kazakhstan’s two- pronged foreign policy

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JULY 16 2017 (The Bulletin) — For Kazakhstan, July 2 marked both the Day of Diplomatic Service and also the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the country’s diplomatic corps. In 1992 Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed a decree setting up the service and another that enshrined a ‘multi-vector’ foreign policy.

Since then, Kazakhstan has built up diplomatic relations with 182 countries, including 57 embassies and 27 consulates abroad. It also hosts 69 embassies, 19 consulates and 27 international organisations representations.

Kazakhstan’s foreign policy can be roughly broken down into two.

Firstly, Astana has been quite successful in setting up multi-vector diplomacy, roughly defined as seeking to keep “friendly and mutually- beneficial relations with all states” while also pushing the country towards playing an “important role in world affairs”.

This is a pragmatic approach to international affairs, evidenced by the balancing between Russia and China, strong ties with the EU and the US, as well as with non-traditional partners such as South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan.

On the other hand, and somewhat less successfully, Kazakhstan has been actively engaging the international community for the past few years in order to boost its image as a modern and mature diplomatic player in world affairs. In January, Kazakhstan took a non-permanent seat at the UN Security Council for two years. Nuclear non-proliferation, the fight against terrorism, and Sino- Russian relations were erected as key priorities.

Kazakhstan also confirmed its intention to play an active role in the peace talks in Syria after hosting five rounds of negotiations since early 2017, although no breakthroughs have been reached yet. Furthermore, Astana is increasingly seeking international prestige and acknowledgment, as evidenced by Astana’s 2017 Expo and its bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

Kazakhstan is actively seeking to boost its regional leadership and increasingly move away from its image of a post-Soviet country and that of a “Stan”. In 2014 it was even proposed to change the name of the country to “Kazakh Eli”, which means country of the Kazakhs in Kazakh. This idea has been abandoned, for now.

By Mathieu Boulegue, analyst specialising in the former Soviet Union for AESMA Group

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

Comment: Turkey’s coup and its impact

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ISTANBUL, JULY 16 2017 (The Bulletin) — Finally we’ve made it to this finest of cities. It’s taken us a week since leaving Edinburgh to get here – via Yorkshire, Hampshire, Lord’s cricket ground, Warsaw, Prague (the airport only) and lovely, louche Odessa.

But at turns brooding and majestic; playful and frustrating, Istanbul is a place that commands love and loyalty. My wife and I are heading east on book research duty, hers not mine, and there was no reason to linger. Still, I insisted. It’s good for the temper, if not the waistline, to spend days here eating, drinking and strolling.

Coincidentally we are in Istanbul for the first anniversary of a failed coup attempt against Turkish President Recep Erdogan. A rebel army unit captured the bridge over the Bosphorus and tried to arrest Erdogan. They failed and the ramifications have been great.

Erdogan blamed the exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen for organising the coup and police have arrested at least 50,000 people for being ‘Gulenists’. This purge hasn’t been confined to Turkey. Pressure has been applied to Turkey’s allies in Central Asia and the South Caucasus too. Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have been happy to comply, others less so, although Georgia has started to acquiesce.

With a resurgent Russia and a powerful China, Turkey’s influence in the region has waned since the 1990s but the coup anniversary is a reminder that events in Istanbul reverberate across the Anatolian plateau, over the Caspian Sea and on to the Tien Shan mountains.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

Uzbekistan has no plans to rejoin the CSTO

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TASHKENT, JULY 3/5 2017 (The Bulletin) — Uzbekistan will not rejoin the Russia-led CSTO military group despite improved relations with its neighbours, Uzbek foreign minister Abdulaziz Kamilov said.

He was speaking after growing speculation that Uzbekistan was looking for a more prominent military role. Earlier, Uzbekistan had said that it was due to hold military exercises with Russia for the first time since 2005.

The CSTO, short for the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, was formed in 1992 after the break up of the Soviet Union and is mainly used as a mechanism for sharing military exercises. Although a rapid reaction force was set up in 2009, it has been criticised for not deploying forces, most notably during ethnic riots in Osh, south Kyrgyzstan, in 2010 that killed hundreds of people.

During a TV interview, Mr Kamilov said: “The question of renewing our CSTO membership is not on the agenda. There are no plans to discuss or review this matter in the future.”

Analysts had speculated that President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, in power since September 2016, may look to reengage with the CSTO. He has generally opened up Uzbekistan since taking power.

Uzbekistan suspended its membership of the CSTO between 1999 and 2006 and quit altogether in 2012. In August 2012, the Uzbek parliament voted to ban Uzbekistan from joining military alliances, including the CSTO. At the time, Uzbekistan was earning billions of dollars as an exit corridor for NATO equipment leaving Afghanistan.

Along with Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are also members.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

Kazakh-US deal extends military cooperation

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JULY 5 2017 (The Bulletin) — After a meeting in Washington DC, officials from Kazakhstan and the US signed a deal to extend military cooperation between the two countries until 2022. No details of the cooperation were released although Kazakh and US armies do hold joint exercises. Over the last few years, Kazakhstan has been improving its military deals with Russia.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)