Kitabı oku: «Post-Soviet Secessionism», sayfa 3
A follow-up agreement to the one of August 15 was signed on September 8, 2008, by the Russian and the French presidents, after Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (Civil Georgia 2008). It contained a more detailed description of the measures to be implemented, with the aim of enhancing the binding character of the ceasefire. The agreement referred directly to Abkhazia and South Ossetia and described the tasks of the OSCE, the UN, and European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM). Russia supported this follow-up agreement, as it did not consider it as contradictory to its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. President Dmitry Medvedev then declared at the press conference that Russia’s decision to recognize them was “final and irreversible.”
As compared to the 1994 ceasefire, the agreements of 2008 expressed a significant shift in the interaction between Georgia and Abkhazia regarding their recognition and non-recognition policies, their status and its implications for identity. The way that Abkhazia was included in the 2008 arrangement profoundly differed from the approach in the 1994 ceasefire. The Abkhaz authorities were not part of the 2008 negotiations, even though there were no legal hurdles to their participation. The 1994 ceasefire demonstrated, in contrast, that it had been possible to sign such an agreement on equal terms with Georgia. This shift cannot be explained by a lack of active participation by the Abkhaz armed forces in the 2008 war. Their military significance was far less than in the 1992–1993 war, but they still had been successful in expelling the Georgian forces from Kodor/i Gorge15 with Russian support.16 The marginalization of Abkhazia in the negotiation process leading to the ceasefire was not due to military but rather political considerations. In contrast to the 1994 setting, Georgia had been confronting Russia. Georgia, France and Russia considered it sufficient for the three states to agree on the terms of a ceasefire. Through their signatures, Abkhazia and South Ossetia then had to give additional guarantees as to the agreement's implementation. This approach did not give them any say, but it was still in line with the pragmatic rule of having all armed formations included in a ceasefire.
The lack of direct interaction with Georgia in the process of negotiating the ceasefire weakened Abkhazia’s status and legitimacy. Abkhazia did not have any active role in producing an agreement indicating its specific rights and duties. The responsibility to end the military conflict on its territory was left to Russia, as Abkhazia’s protector’s state. Such diminished status was, however, counterbalanced by Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia’s statehood in August 2008. Abkhazia could then claim that its recognition gave it a totally new status under international law. It was now at least partially recognized by the international community. In Russia and Abkhazia’s perception, this would strengthen its legal and political status in the negotiations. Indeed, it made it far more difficult for Georgia and its Western allies to impose decisions on Abkhazia through the means of international organizations—or, alternatively, to isolate Russia within these organizations in attempts to impose their non-recognition policies. The UNSC, for instance, was now openly divided regarding the application of the principle of territorial integrity to Georgia and, thus, unable to prescribe conditions for the deployment of peacekeeping forces or observers in Abkhazia; Russia would veto any Western proposal that would not respect the rights of Abkhazia as an independent state. UNOMIG had to leave Abkhazia (Coppieters 2015) and the observers from the EUMM did not receive the authorization from Sukhum/i to enter it. Abkhazia was also able to sign interstate treaties with Russia regarding its military presence on its territory.
Abkhazia perceived its enhanced status as a result of its steadfast refusal to compromise. Abkhazia considered itself freed once and for all from foreign occupation and colonization. The ties with Russia were described as a strategic partnership, based on sovereign equality. Abkhazia’s new self-confidence as a result of the recognition of its independence by Russia found direct expression in economic expectations: the house prices in Sukhum/i rose significantly after Russia’s recognition (Nazarenko 2014).
Georgia, in contrast, confronted with an even more radical loss of control over the breakaway territory, hardened its policy of non-recognition after the August war. It considered Russia’s actions as an act of revenge against Georgia’s efforts to join the NATO alliance in line with its Western identity (Asmus 2010: 50). The format of negotiation for the ceasefire strengthened Georgia’s view that Russia was not only a direct party to the conflict in Abkhazia and South Ossetia—a role that Russia has always denied—but that it was actually an occupying force. Georgia addressed all the issues that were to be raised at negotiations (security, trade and human rights) in the framework of occupation. Russia was, for instance, now considered to have specific legal responsibility for human rights violations in Abkhazia. This was a very different discourse than the one that prevailed after the 1992–1993 war, when Tbilisi considered the Abkhaz authorities to be entirely responsible for the failure to respect agreements on the return of IDPs and refugees, and when it held the international community—including the Russian authorities—to account. The discourse on occupation further expressed Georgia’s principled stand in its refusal to accept the loss of its territories (Asmus 2010: 50). This stance gave it a kind of self-respect against the backdrop of military defeat: Georgia had not been defeated militarily by Abkhazia or South Ossetia, but by Russia.
Abkhazia was considered by Georgia to be a territory occupied by Russia. This position would make it even more difficult for Abkhazia to participate in negotiations on an equal footing. Georgia even refused to acknowledge the Abkhaz participants as de facto representatives of Abkhazia in the Geneva International Discussions. This represented a radical shift in the negotiating position of Georgia as compared to the period before the August 2008 war. Georgia asserted that the Abkhaz participants could only speak in their personal capacity as individual ‘experts.’ The Abkhaz participants accepted this demand in order to participate in the negotiations, but they did so at the price of having the formal status of the Georgian representatives in the working groups not acknowledged as well (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Abkhazia 2013).
The delegations’ lack of representativeness meant that they had little incentive to make the negotiations fruitful, and this complicated the conclusion of legally binding agreements. This mutual non-recognition of the representative status of the parties to the negotiation made it difficult to initiate confidence-building measures. Expectations of reciprocity were low. This made attempts to create institutional forms of cooperation or common security mechanisms more difficult for many years to come.
B. Moldova and Transnistria
The ceasefire agreement of July 21, 1992, to end the fighting in Transnistria was signed exclusively by the representatives of the Republic of Moldova and the Russian Federation. Contrary to the 1994 ceasefire in Abkhazia, there was, to speak in formal terms found in the legal literature (Bell 2006: 390), no mix of state and non-state signatories, which meant that there was also no full correlation between the signatories of the treaty and the parties to the conflict. The fact that the signatories had the same international legal status strengthened the legal status of the agreement, in line with the prescription in the legal literature that “those who wish to frame agreements clearly as treaties can best do so by framing them as between state parties only” (Bell 2006: 386). The ceasefire, thus, did not imply the same kind of recognition of the breakaway authority as would later be the case in the 1994 ceasefire in Abkhazia.
However, the document still allowed the de facto authorities to play a role in its implementation. It prescribed a halt to all armed activities and the withdrawal of troops and military equipment to allow for the creation of a security zone to separate the two parties. A Joint Peacekeeping Force (JPKF) was set up. It was initially composed of mainly Russian troops and later of Russian, Moldovan and Transnistrian battalions and companies. The belligerent parties were, thus, fully integrated into the peacekeeping. The JPKF had to protect bridges and prevent armaments from being brought into the security zone that separated the two sides. Transparency was enhanced by the presence of 40 military observers from Moldova, Transnistria, Russia and Ukraine.
The de facto status of the Transnistrian authorities was further strengthened through their participation in the Joint Control Commission (JCC), together with Moldova and Russia. The JCC had to supervise the ceasefire by commanding the JPKF. Its role included preventing breaches of the ceasefire agreement and restoring the ceasefire in cases of its violation. Transnistria’s inclusion in the JCC fostered its commitment to the implementation of the agreement between Russia and Moldova, even without any signature.
The inclusion of the two belligerent parties in the peacekeeping operation had political consequences regarding the resolution of the conflict. The seeking of consensus within the JCC avoided the destabilization of the security arrangement, but it also reinforced the status quo by limiting transparency and mediation initiatives. It has, for instance, been difficult for the parties to exchange information on the security situation.
In terms of identity, those Moldovans who considered the conflict with Transnistria as a proxy conflict with Russia found confirmation of this interpretation in the terms of the ceasefire: Why did Moldova sign it exclusively with Russia if the Transnistrians were not Russian pawns? (Hill 2012: 52). Transnistria, in contrast, claimed that it was an international actor in its own right, and that it was capable of contributing to the regulation of this conflict.
C. Cyprus and North Cyprus
The August 1974 ceasefire in Cyprus was, in contrast to the ones in Georgia and Moldova, not based on an agreement among the conflicting parties but on a unilateral decision by Turkey to halt the advancement of its troops. Turkey had started the first military invasion of the island on July 20, 1974, placing a major part of Cyprus under its control. The first round of peace talks followed in Geneva on July 25, 1974. These talks were exclusively held by Turkey, Greece and the United Kingdom. These states were committed, according to the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, to protect the constitutional order and security of the island. In a second round of talks, on August 8, the circle of participants was enlarged to include representatives of Greek and Turkish Cypriots. The negotiations failed. The second invasion started on August 14, 1974 (Ker-Lindsay 2005: 14). The Turkish forces enlarged the territory under its control. It halted the progress of its military operations through a unilateral de facto ceasefire two days later.
The lack of a precisely formulated ceasefire agreement has complicated the fulfillment of the mandate of the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) since then. The UNFICYP was given a supervisory role regarding the deployment of the Cyprus National Guard in the south and the Turkish Cypriot and Turkish forces in the north. A large buffer zone was established, extending about 180 kilometers across the whole island (about 3 percent of the whole territory) to separate the opposing forces (United Nations 2002).
Unlike the ceasefires in Abkhazia and Transnistria, the armed conflict in Cyprus only ended through the unilateral decision of an external actor. On the basis of the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee it had signed with Cyprus, the United Kingdom and Greece, Turkey could claim to be one of the guarantor states of Cyprus that had the right to re-establish, if necessary, order on the island. In terms of identity, Turkish and Greek Cypriots developed a discourse focusing on the justice of their respective causes—either as a victim of oppression and liberated by Turkey’s brotherly support, or as victim of occupation counting on the support of the international community.
5. Trade Agreements
A. North Cyprus
The majority of the Greek Cypriot community in Cyprus rejected the UN plan for the reunification of Cyprus in 2004. Consequently, the Turkish Cypriot community could not accede to the EU. The EU proposed a number of measures to avoid the isolation of North Cyprus and to prepare it for its future reunification with the south. On April 29, 2004, the Council of the European Union issued a trade regulation—the so-called Green Line Regulation—for the transportation of goods between north and south. The Turkish Cypriot Chamber of Commerce received the authorization to issue certificates of origin. This allowed goods produced in the north to be traded with the south. The Council made this decision just a few days before the formal accession of the Republic of Cyprus to the EU, but not against its will. The fact that the Chamber of Commerce had been founded in 1958, before the division of Cyprus, made it a legitimate institution for this purpose in the eyes of the Greek Cypriot government. Direct trade between North Cyprus and the EU, however, remained excluded.
The regulation of trade between north and south is significant in political but not in economic terms. In 2018, the value of this regulated trade between the two parts of the island amounted to only 4.8 million euros (European Commission 2019). The low level of trade from south to north (1.1 million euros in 2018) is largely a consequence of the status question: North Cyprus asks customs duties to be paid on goods coming from the south, as it regards the border to be an international one. However, according to the Republic of Cyprus and the EU, the border is not international. The goods exported to the north are, therefore, not exempt from value added tax (VAT), in contrast to goods that are exported outside the EU (Mirimanova 2015a: 53; Coppieters 2017: 41–42).
This arrangement is an interesting compromise in terms of recognition. The Greek Cypriot leadership recognized the Turkish Cypriot Chamber of Commerce as a legitimate authority to issue trade documents, and the Turkish Cypriot side acknowledged that it had a subordinate role in an asymmetric arrangement, where all trade with the EU had to pass through the south of Cyprus.
The Turkish Cypriots also hoped to enhance their status regarding trade through the regulation of direct trade with the EU, but all attempts in this direction have failed, despite the support they received from the European Commission. The Republic of Cyprus and the majority of the European Parliament opposed such a trade liberalization, as it would imply that the EU would grant North Cyprus the status of a separate legal entity (Coppieters 2017: 43).
B. Moldova and Transnistria
The Moldovan strategy has been to obtain concessions from the Transnistrian regime through outside pressure, enforcing a non-recognition policy in the economic field in particular. Transnistria, previously a relatively well-developed industrial region in the Soviet Union, has no access to export markets other than through Ukraine or Moldova. In 2005, Chisinau, with active support from the EU and in cooperation with the Ukrainian authorities, introduced border and customs controls for Transnistrian goods, with the aim of forcing Transnistrian export companies that want to trade with the EU or Ukraine to register in Chisinau in order to obtain the necessary customs papers (Popescu & Litra 2012). This policy—where Transnistrian companies were forced to engage in trade with the EU as if they were Moldovan—was difficult to accept from the perspective of Transnistria’s non-recognition policies. However, the threat that all exports to the EU would be halted gave it no other choice. It had to accept the use of Moldovan certificates of origin to export its goods to the EU. Around 2,000 Transnistrian companies were registered in 2019. Companies trading exclusively with Ukraine, small companies and individual entrepreneurs managed to avoid such registration.
The Moldovan policies created tensions with Transnistria, although not enough to prevent a partial rapprochement (European Commission & High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy 2013). An intensification of trade links was favored by the change of government in Transnistria in December 2011, when Igor Smirnov, who had held the presidency for two decades, was defeated by Yevgeny Shevchuk. Train traffic between Moldova and Ukraine through Transnistria resumed in April 2012. Transnistria’s external trade with the EU benefited from the customs tariff introduced as a result of Moldova’s participation in the EU’s Autonomous Trade Preferences (ATP) regime (Konończuk & Rodkiewicz 2012). Moreover, the EU established direct links with Transnistrian authorities, organizing seminars on EU policy and training sessions on trade regulations.
However, at no point did the partial improvement of relations with Chisinau and Brussels reduce Transnistria’s preference for further integration with Russia—including leaning towards the Eurasian Economic Union. The severe economic recession in Transnistria caused by the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2014—which made it more difficult to use Ukraine as a transit route to Russia—increased its financial dependence on Moscow, strengthening its eastward political orientation. The EU rejected Transnistria’s demand to be considered a full negotiating partner on an equal basis as Moldova. Transnistria, for its part, refused to participate actively in the negotiations between the EU and Moldova on a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA). The DCFTA was included in the Association Agreement between the EU and Moldova of June 27, 2014. It was due to replace the EU’s ATP regime with Moldova, which had allowed Transnistria to receive preferential treatment regarding trade, and which was due to expire at the end of 2015. As a non-recognized entity, Transnistria would not be able to participate in the ATP on its own. The loss of a preferential treatment due to remaining outside the DCFTA would have led to a substantial increase in its export tariffs. Brussels presented the choice to Transnistria as an "either/or" decision.
A compromise was found in November/December 2015 (Calus 2016; Secrieru 2016). The agreement between Transnistria and Moldova did not mention the DCFTA, but used a more ambiguous formula, referring to trade facilitation measures. Under the agreement, the DCFTA would be implemented on the “entire territory” of Moldova from January 1, 2016, onwards (EU-Republic of Moldova Association Council 2015). Thus, Transnistria would join the DCFTA before having introduced the appropriate legislation and, in exchange, would lift its trade barriers for EU products within a period of two years and comply with World Trade Organizations (WTO) regulations.
This compromise was in the interest of all parties and reflected the power differentials between them. A fall in Transnistria’s exports to the EU would not have benefited any of the parties. Russia was not interested in diminishing Transnistria’s westward trade, as it would then have to compensate for the loss by giving additional economic support to Transnistria. The EU, for its part, was interested in a rapprochement between Moldova and Transnistria. Having closer economic links with the breakaway republic—which would increase Transnistria’s long-term dependence on the EU and its capacity to reintegrate into Moldova—seemed more important than the creation of a common legal framework for overseeing the implementation of the DCFTA regulations in the immediate future. The EU was ready to accept that it would not be able to monitor the required legal reforms in Transnistria in the initial stages of implementation of the agreement. From the Transnistrian (and also the Russian) perspective, the fact that this process was reversible facilitated its acceptance. Moreover, Transnistria managed to save face, due to the fact that the details of the agreement were not disclosed: its officials claimed that the agreement resulted from direct bilateral negotiations with Brussels where, as they said, they convinced their counterparts of the correctness of their position (Infotag 2015).
The proportion of Transnistrian goods destined for the EU market increased as a result of this agreement (Popsoi 2016; Montesano, Van der Togt & Zweers 2016). Moreover, the OSCE facilitated the signing of a large number of protocols on various forms of cooperation between Chisinau and Tiraspol (European Commission & High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy 2018). However, Transnistria has also repeatedly accused the EU and Moldova of imposing an economic blockade and forcing it to accept terms it would otherwise have rejected.
The European Union pushed Transnistria to fulfill the DCFTA requirements and strives to monitor its implementation. Despite positive steps forward in terms of practical cooperation between Moldova and Transnistria, the positions of both parties regarding their status and identity remain confrontational on the rhetorical level. Moldova recognizes Transnistria as a trading entity, but not as an equal trading partner, with Transnistria unwillingly accepting a status of subordination to Moldova. In addition, Moldova and Transnistria do not recognize each other in terms of their respective political identities.
