News.Az interviews George Schopflin Member of the European Parliament for Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Union.
Mr. Schopflin, not long ago the election in Nagorno Karabakh region passed. What do you think about its legitimacy and what comments could you make?
What I find very strange is the way that the outside world is trying to merge two problem. To my mind, there are two separate problems: one is Nagorno Karabakh proper which has 70-80 % Armenian population, and the other is the neighbouring seven rayons, which have effectively been ethnically cleansed – there are about a million refugees from there in Azerbaijan. I really don't understand why the international community has been so reluctant to confront this. Partly, I think it’s to do with Russia, which doesn't want the problem to be solved. It's very convenient for Russia to have this constant “pressure point” in both directions, towards Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Partly, I think also that Azerbaijan has not done enough to promote this issue. I've talked quite a lot about Azerbaijani “soft power” and it's not being really used at all. Now Azerbaijan has taken on the role of a major, serious military player, relying on oil money. There is more than enough left that could be used to promote Azerbaijan as a European country. I think also, it was very good step for Azerbaijan to join the Eurovision Song Contest, so why not go on from there and establish cultural institutes which should be independent but certainly focus on the Caucasus?
Do you think that Azerbaijan really needs to make a promotion of its problem instead of trying to solve it by military means?
Actually if you look at Caucuses and its security, this must be a problem for Azerbaijan. There is a major insurgency taking place in the Northern Caucasus, the violence is not in the Southern Caucasus but it could spread. And it seems to me that here Azerbaijan is not independent enough to argue its case and most people have never heard of Nagorno Karabakh and these seven rayons. For most Europeans it is a problem somewhere over there, far away, and I think there is a great deal that could be done. to bring it home to Europe, that it’s Europe’s problem too.
Several members of Russian Parliament (Duma) went to Nagorno Karabakh trying to influent the process or lightly to frame Russian position supporting this election. At the same time they argue that Duma is not an official institute to legitimate Russian position, what do you think about it?
I think they are both strategic terms. Russia wants to reincorporate South Caucasus into its direct sphere of influence, probably not to reincorporate the states completely but turn entire region into what I would call "neosatellites", in the same way that Armenia is controlled. It seems to me that anything that Russia is doing in Armenia or "NK" is very much about seeing how much control Russia has.
I think that the strategic goal for the South Caucasus as seen in Russia is similar to what Russia is doing in Ukraine. There has been an intelligence take-over, brilliant, successful and very fast. The Ukrainian government, in effect, said: “ok you are free to do what ever you like”. But the main medium term result could well be resistance on the part of half the Ukrainian population which didn’t vote for the present regime. So we will see how that works out. We can see, then, that Russian’s strategic objective is to ensure that South Caucasus is still in the Russian sphere of influence.
What about Georgia, do you think Russia have already lost its influence there?
No, I think Russia did very well as a result of the Georgian war. The only thing they didn't gain was to overthrow Saakashvili, that was the strategic goal. In that the Russians failed. In Georgia, the Russians did surprising very well in military terms, they nearly cut the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, degraded the number of port installlations and so on and so forth.
Frankly, from the European point of view, I would not have given up on Georgia, because it very important part of the world and Soviet Union has already invaded Georgian, once in 1922. In a way, the thing to understand is that for Russia, Georgia is not really accepted as a foreign country. It is "nash" it is "ours"; Russia would not hesitate about invading. Russia will probably not try to invade Turkey because its too big; they tried to invade Afghanistan but they suffered a loss of face there, but Georgia and South Caucasus are different and Russia has been busy there for a long time.
Nowadays the question of identification from the point of country geographic representation is the same vital as the question of national and ethnic identity. How Europeans accept Azerbaijan: as European country, Caucasian or it might be still Russian colony?
I’m sorry to have to say that most people don't bother, they are indifferent.
How do you think, may this indifference from the Europeans cause the situation when Azerbaijan is obliged to apply to Russia for the positive solution for Nagorno Karabakh and its seven rerions?
Partly! There is a certain readiness to say: “well this is Europe”. If you asked me 30 years ago: is the South Caucasus is in Europe? I would say “no”, but situation has been shifted. I think Kazakhstan for example is still very clearly not a Europe. Caspian is a kind of a boundary. If you ask me is Iran a Europe - clearly no! I think that Nagorno Karabakh is, therefore, implicated in Europe’s future. Further, you remember this Swedish –Polish initiative of two years ago and Eastern dimension. I think it automatically fell into place; all the countries of the South Caucasus are part of Europe. In another words it’s a kind of long term sense of following a closer integration, and “Karabakh issue” will be solved too. People don't want to deal with this directly the same as they don't want to deal directly with the problems of Belarus which is clearly known as not being a democratic country.
My next question is about official instruments such as huge amount of the committees and commissions in Europe responsible for this region. From time to time they make statements, here in the European Parliament that “the process is much positive and it comes to its logic solution”. I want to understand why these European statesmen are so unfair and partial, taking into account, that they don’t suffer any outsourcing pressures?
There are number of reasons it's not entirely one sided. There are reasons why there is often a formula in use, to say that things are moving in a right direction. It's the European style to say “yes, you are doing this very well but there are other things you must do”. It's a kind of encouragment before criticism. It is not unlike the Soviet style in newspaper “Pravda”, if you remember, there were two-thirds of the article saying, “everything is wonderful, comrades”, however… and then they criticize. When I first came here I was a little but shocked by this, but I got used to the style of this place.
So if you read these reports carefully you will see they begin by saying: “we are very encouraged by such and such country by doing this and that, but then there serious problems to be tackled and etc”. The second part is that overall the European Union deals with governments and they believe what government says. But we also know that sometimes a government lies. And there is a third problem When my colleagues go to any country, they will meet the government officials, the opposition politicians, they may even meet the civil society, but they never meet academics or journalists, those who could criticize the system, unless the individuals are happened to be in the prisons.
It seems you criticize the system and your colleges?
Well, that just the way it is. And it is very difficult to change this, whenever I go over on a mission, I try to meet some sociologists, political scientists or anthropologists. A couple of times when it is happened, I had some colleagues with me and they would say we rare out of our depth, here you ask the questions; and then we would have a private dialogue and I do understand the special language of the political scientists or sociologists but for practising politicians, it is a different world.
In another words it means if someone appears to European Union, there is a small chance to be heard?
It depends. European Union will be happy to act as facilitator, to provide the space where parties can discuss what to do, but the European Union can really act if the other party, the other country itself wants to act.
It means they don't want to?
Europeans realize that they don’t have “hard power”. That is the hard reality. Europeans don't fight.
George Schopflin is member of the European Parliament for Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Union, a member of the Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, in 2004, and re-elected in 2009. Full member on the Parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee (AFCO) and as a substitute member on the Foreign Affairs Committee (AFET) and its Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE). Coordinator of the Agora (Civil Parliament) on the behalf of the EPP-ED and also one of the founding members of the United Europe, United History informal working group.
Saadat Kadyrova
News.Az