Page 63 - RusRPTAug24

bne August 2024
Opinion 63
Islamists and oppositionists, that the AKP was not doing enough to support the Palestinian cause.
Since then, Erdogan has been a champion of Palestinian liberty. “We object to the oppression, massacre and injustice that has been going on for 76 years,” he said during one early June speech. “We stand with the Palestinian people with all our means.”
Azerbaijani officials have clearly been rattled by the criticism. President Ilham Aliyev, during his recent trip to Egypt, stressed that the “tragedy in Gaza must be stopped.” Meanwhile, SOCAR issued a statement that denied the company was making direct sales to Israel, citing the technicality that it is merely fulfilling contractual obligations to provide a certain volume of oil for the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline.
“We conduct all our activities within the framework of international business agreements,” the statement said.
Some pro-Baku commentators have pushed back, accusing the Turks of ingratitude. For example, Nigar Ibrahimova, a Turkish journalist of Azeri origin, pointed out that SOCAR, unlike “your oil-rich Arab brothers,” distributed oil free of charge to areas impacted by the devastating earthquake in southern Turkey in 2023.
Given the tight control Aliyev’s administration flexes over Azerbaijan’s domestic political environment, there have been
HESS
few expressions of public opinion concerning the warfare in Gaza. One notable exception was an under-the-radar, pro-Palestinian fundraiser held in Baku recently.
The simmering tension in Azerbaijani-Turkish relations could be seen in what was reported – and not reported – in official accounts of a one-on-one meeting between Erdogan and Aliyev on June 10.
A brief report of the meeting published by the Turkish Anadolu news agency noted that Erdogan raised the Israeli- Palestinian issue, highlighting “the need for international pressure on Israel to address” alleged atrocities in Gaza. The report went on to say Ergogan “reaffirmed that a lasting solution lies in the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
Meanwhile, a notably short account of the meeting published on Aliyev’s official presidential website did not contain any reference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while hailing
the “successful development of fraternal, friendly and allied relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey.”
Bahruz Samadov is a PhD candidate in political science at Charles University in Prague.
This article first appeared on Eurasianet.
Georgia’s dreams dying as EU accession suspended
bne IntelliNews
On June 9 the EU announced the suspension of Georgia’s accession talks and on June 11, the declaration that followed this year's annual Nato Summit failed to include the phrase “Georgia will become a member of the Alliance with the Membership Action Plan as an integral
part of the process” for the first time since it was adopted in 2008. Thus, the two leading pillars of Georgia’s foreign policy for the last twenty years – and the key aspirations of the overwhelming majority of Georgians – have been dashed.
It is not the first, but the second, time that the aspirations of the Georgian people have been dashed by the country’s two leading politicians.
Georgia today faces its deepest crisis under the leadership of the Georgian Dream Party and its ‘honorary chairman’ and
dominant leader, Bidzina Ivanishvili, a man whose wealth
is nearly one-third of the country’s GDP. Ivanishvili and his Georgian Dream came to power in 2012 after then-president Mikheil Saakashvili disgraced himself and his government
by seeking to consolidate power in the face of democratic opposition and were simultaneously caught up in a fatal scandal around the brutalisation of prisoners, caught on video. Then as now, the government’s fatal flaw has been to put the interests of its leadership over those of the Georgian people.
The current crisis was triggered by the Georgian Dream’s April decision to re-introduce a law on ‘foreign agents’ that it had previously scuppered last year in the face of mass protests. This year’s protests have been even larger than last year’s but the ruling party doubled-down on the measure, even overturning a veto by President Salome
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