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The Transcaucasus has been a plaything of imperial powers early this century due to ist large gas and crude oil reserves. Similar to this Great Game of late 19. and early 20. Centuries a new oil game on the Transcausus and Eurasia has emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Today's struggle involves oil and geopolitics and many state and non-state actors on it.
After the economic and at least political collapse of the Soviet Union many ethnic sovereign republics of Eurasia have declared their independence from the Union. This has caused a new geopolitics of a huge area stretching from Eastern Europe to the Chinese border and from Siberia to South Asia.
Today's struggle for Eurasian oil is a complex of security, geopolitical and economic games. Russia as the successor of the Soviet Empire might be a more developed democracy or a huge empire of an uncertain kind again. It wants to ensure its economic and political influence on the republics of the CIS again. The wars in the Transcaucasus, in Chechnya, between Azerbaijan and Armenia and in Georgia have been all influenced or directly exacerbated by Moscow and the Russian army. Observers suspect that many coup d'etats in Azerbaijan since end of 1980's have been directly controlled by Moscow. The June 1993 coup attempt against the pro-Turkish president Elchibey has been stagemanaged by Moscow to replace him with a former communist leader, Heidar Aliyev. Natural ressources of a new Persian Gulf capacity makes countries on the Caspian Sea and primarily Azerbaijan with most of the oil reserves a geopolitically important region. If all goes well, Azerbaijan should within 15 years be producing 700,000 barrels of oil a day, worth about $4.2 billion a year at today's prices.
There are also other players on this game. A considerably high number of foreign companies in oil and finance issues and other sectors have been operating in Central Asia and the Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Turkey has close cultural, historical and ethnical ties to this region. Four Turkic republics of Central Asia, Azerbaijan and many other Turkic ethnic minorities in the Russian Federation speak dialects of the same language family. Iran as a historic player of Great Game has economic and ideologic interests and aims throughout Central Asia and the Transcaucasus.
This struggle for oil and money is a multi-dimensional political issue. The main threat to the economic development of the Transcaucasian oil is the partnership of Russia and Iran. Russia wants to dominate the Caucasus in an alliance with the radical Islamic regime of Iran which occasionally supports and creates international terror. The uncertain future of the Armenian Azeri ceasefire, the outgoing of the Chechen war, ethnic riots throughout Georgia and other republics of Caucasia creates a region of instability. Russia has been successful on linking the Caspian early oil to its current pipelines ending on its Black Sea port of Novorosiisk. A pipeline route through Eastern Anatolia to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan is an environmentally and economical better alternative than the Black Sea route. Any other pipeline ending in Novorosiisk or another port on the Black Sea makes the international trade ineffective because of the environmentally hazardous and longer way to world markets.
Iran is also an important factor in this Great Game. It is on a geostrategic sensitive and significant position between Central Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Transcaucasus and Turkey. Iran sees itself in a competitive position with Turkey. It's ethnically mixed population could be a security problem in the future if separatist movements would gain weight. There are between 20 and 30 million Azeris living in Iran (CIA records). Other Turkmen and Baluchian minorities are also a large group of other people living in Iran. The future of the religious regime in Teheran is an uncertain one because of economic problems, democratic and oppositional movements. One can imagine that the Azeri majority living in the north-eastern part of Iran will have a more effective influence on the outgoing of political decisions in Teheran as soon as democratic conditions improve. A separative movement for an independent Azeri state or a unification with the northern "Republic of Azerbaijan" could change geopolitical conditions enormously. This would end the geographic disunity of Turkic states stretching from the Bosphorus to the Chinese border. The geographic unity of the Eurasian Turkic states could ease the conditions for an economic or political integration and partnership. Pan Turkic movements of a political nature have been existing since the end of the Cold War. On the other side an economic union between the Eurasian Turkic states would be as powerful as a political union as well. Organizations and unions of regional and multi-national economic cooperations will be dominating the world economy and politics in the 21. Century (EU, NAFTA, APEC).
The new Great Game in Eurasia will be about much more than oil in the coming century. A huge market of more than 200 million people and countries with large natural ressources could develop a region of welfare and peace. It can also create a huge area of economic and political instability which would have negative effects on the future of this huge region and the world. Western governments and regional powers should work more closely on creating a balanced interplay of international competition in Eurasia. Eurasia needs equal partners and no "Big Brother"s in the future again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Mehmet Binay is a Turkish graduate student of political science in Germany. He is author of a www site containing weekly analytical articles about the Turkish geopolitics.