Azerbaijan may take Turkey’s traditional role with Israel

Frequent visits by top-level Israeli officials to Azerbaijan are fostering an Israeli-Azerbaijani strategic partnership and may indirectly signal deteriorating relations between Turkey and Israel.

Azerbaijan long maintained good relations with Israel, and it is one of the few countries with a Muslim majority that have established diplomatic ties with Israel. Israel sees developing friendly relations with Azerbaijan as a historic opportunity during a time when relations between Turkey and Azerbaijan are deteriorating because of the protocols signed by Turkey and Armenia. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman paid a three-day visit to Baku last week. Not even a year ago, Israeli President Shimon Perez also visited Azerbaijan, concluding strategic and military partnership agreements with the country. While harshly criticizing Turkey’s “weekly” condemnations of Israeli policies, Lieberman called Azerbaijan a moderate, tolerant Muslim country that has good relations with Israel. Last week, Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, made an informal visit to Azerbaijan. Many analysts believe Israel is attempting to find strategic partners because its good relations with Turkey are strained.

Speaking to Sunday’s Zaman, Henri J. Barkey, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the ties developing between Azerbaijan and Israel are independent of Turkey but also influenced by it. According to Barkey this advancement is also within the interests of Azerbaijan, proving to Turkey that Azerbaijan is an independent country with independent government-led foreign policies. “From Baku’s perspective, the relationship with Israel is important because it demonstrates that he [Azerbaijan] is not at Turkey’s beck and call,” said Barkey.

Israeli expert Olena Bagno, Neubauer fellow at the Israeli-based think tank Institute for National Security Studies, said while speaking to Sunday’s Zaman that in Israel, Azerbaijan is perceived as an independent, Western-oriented country which is free to pursue the type of foreign policy that suits its national interests. Bagno thinks the Israeli-Azerbaijani relationship is not in conflict with the Turkish-Azerbaijani relationship. Noting that both the Israeli and Azerbaijani governments fear the growth of radical Islam and that economic cooperation between Israel and Azerbaijan has grown significantly, Bagno said until recently this type of close cooperation was also shared with Turkey by both Israel and Azerbaijan. “Turkey is at the crossroad and in Israel there is a hope that it will choose to return to the path oriented towards the Western world,” Bagno said.

Considering Israeli-Azerbaijani relations, Barkey says the relationship between Azerbaijan and Israel is both independent of Turkey and also influenced by it. “Azerbaijan needs to make sure that Israel does not cozy up too much to Armenia,” says the expert. Speaking to Sunday’s Zaman, Elnur Soltanov, an expert at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy, said what links Azerbaijan and Israel is very similar to what links and will continue to link Israel and Turkey and that what sets the latter two apart has nothing to do with what unites Israel and Azerbaijan. According to Soltanov, the Israeli-Azerbaijani relationship rests on balancing the aggressively biased Armenian lobby in the US as well as some military and economic cooperation and may also be successful because of the lack of anti-Semitism in Azerbaijan, among other things.

Illustrating the impact the Azerbaijani-Israeli relationship has on Turkey, Barkey states that Israel is a country living on exports. “Opening new markets is always a paramount consideration. Again, if this annoys the Turkish prime minister, it is a bonus but not in any way the real intent of the visit,” says the expert.

Evaluating the Turkish-Israeli relationship, Soltanov says the historical, regional and global factors that have been pushing the countries apart will not go much further as Israel and Turkey still need each other both economically and militarily and regarding their ties to the [United] States. Simultaneously, Soltanov ponders Azerbaijan being part of the solution, not the problem, vis-a-vis the relations between Israel and Turkey. Calling Azerbaijan the only point in the triangle where both vectors are strong, Soltanov says even if Azerbaijan may not be “the” broker between Turkey and Israel, it may be one of the factors in helping these countries to improve their relations, and at the very least, in having a positively moderating effect while Ankara and Tel-Aviv work to redefine their relations.

LAMİYA ADİLGIZI   BAKU, todayszaman