Shifting Geopolitics in the Caucasus
Video Transcript:
Video Transcript
Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili will visit Turkey on Feb. 14, where he will meet with his Turkish counterpart. This is the latest visit in a regional tour that Ivanishvili has taken since winning Georgian parliamentary elections and becoming premier in October 2012.
The political shift in Georgia has opened up the potential for a shift in a number of Western-oriented policies pursued by Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who had dominated Georgia's political landscape for nearly a decade before the emergence of Ivanishvili. This has forced all of Georgia's neighbors -- including Russia, Azerbaijan and Turkey -- to recalculate their positions as the region could see some significant geopolitical changes as a result of the new leadership in Georgia.
The country that could see the biggest shift in its relationship with Georgia is Russia. Ivanishvili campaigned on a platform of normalizing economic ties with Russia, and already there have been some concrete steps in this regard. Last week, a Georgian delegation traveled to Moscow and came to an agreement on resuming exports of key goods like wine, mineral water and agricultural products that had been cut off since before the Russia-Georgia war of 2008. This could be a sign of bigger things to come, with Georgian and Russian officials giving hints of increasing cooperation in more strategic areas like energy and transportation links.
This shift in Tbilisi's relationship with Moscow is a worrying prospect to another one of Georgia's neighbors -- Azerbaijan. Baku has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of Georgia's strained relationship with Russia, particularly when it comes to energy. Georgia is a key energy transit state for Azerbaijan's oil and natural gas exports to Turkey and Europe, known as the Southern Corridor route. Azerbaijan has plans to expand these exports once natural gas from the Shah Deniz II field is set to come online in 2017, but is worried that Georgia could become closer to Russia over this time frame and potentially jeopardize the project, or at least give Moscow significant leverage over it.
Another country that is concerned over Georgia's political evolution is Turkey. Like Azerbaijan, Turkey has come to depend on Georgia as a reliable transit state for energy, only in this case as a consumer rather than a producer. Other projects, such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway that is currently under construction have been thrown into doubt, with Ivanishvili stating his skepticism about the economic viability of the project. In the meantime, Ivanishvili has showed tempered interest in reviving a direct rail line between Georgia and Russia via Abkhazia that has been offline for 20 years, a project also supported by neighboring Armenia. While Ivanishvili has since backtracked from his statements and said that the railway project with Turkey will go ahead as planned, it is these shifts in position that are worrying to the likes of Ankara and Baku.
Still, any major shifts out of Georgia are unlikely to occur in the near term as Ivanishvili has yet to fully consolidate power politically in the country, with presidential elections approaching in October. At the same time, George's neighbors have enough reason to start reassessing their positions now in preparation for what could be a broader shift on the horizon.
