Some political analysts in Armenia tend to think that the municipal elections due in Yerevan this Sunday (May 31) may undermine the country’s fragile stability. However, that is not quite true.

Undoubtedly, certain complications of the situation are always possible, and especially after the elections, however one cannot overlook the fact that the most fatal changes in countries like Armenia are determined by foreign interest and foreign influence.

The main foreign interest is the perspective of building relations with Turkey, and the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem as soon as possible. That’s where the actual threat of destabilization for Armenia’s current authorities comes from.

During the past two months the co-chairs of the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have made more statements on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue than they had during the whole year. In their statements the mediators did not exclude the prospect of settling the issue within the coming few months.

Armenia’s leadership have faced the need to settle the Karabakh issue as soon as possible. And that, in a sense, is a deadlock.

The American co-chair of the Minsk Group, Matthew Bryza, has repeatedly stated that five “Azerbaijani districts” have to “come out” of Armenian control (Getabek, Fizuli, Aghdam, Zangelan, Kutabli). He was pointing out to the need to think up some interesting status for Nagorno-Karabakh (within the limits of the former Autonomous Region of Nagorno-Karabakh). However, the issue is that the moment Armenia’s leadership agree to such a unilateral concession, they’ll sign their resignation.

No one in the country will agree to give away to Azerbaijan Karabakh’s historic regions won back at the cost of blood. Hence, the first step on the way of the putative solution of the issue would lead to destabilization of the situation in Armenia. Moreover, former president Robert Kocharyan might return to major-league politics and form a coalition with Dashnaktsutyun.

The possible readiness of the Armenian authorities to make unilateral concessions may become the subject of speculations in domestic politics, this time on the part of the opposition Armenian National Congress.

The current administration is in a deadlock also on ‘the western border’. With Turkey.

On the one hand, it has to maintain communication with the Turkish side and declare about its eagerness to establish diplomatic relations without any preconditions. At the same time, the Armenian side doesn’t mind the opening of the border. As for Ankara, at the initial stage it won’t raise the Karabakh issue, as the most important thing for it now is the ratification of the Armenian-Turkish border.

The moment the current administration takes that step (nothing different is expected to happen in the case with Turkey), there will be a shift of power in the country. In modern Armenia there cannot be a government which could afford to sign a paper that includes a point on inviolability of the border (with Turkey) and retain the reins of power.

The Armenian Diaspora scattered all over the world realizes that the Armenian-Turkish border (or rather, the Soviet-Turkish border) is temporary, regardless of today’s realities or a certain feebleness of the Armenian state and the political elite representing that state.

Any representative of the country who would agree to sign an agreement on inviolability of the frontier is doomed. They will simply be forced to step down by a protest movement. Consequently, the authorities are in a deadlock and have no choice but keep repeating something quite obvious: “the Karabakh issue is not a precondition in the negotiations with Turkey”.

Armenia’s neighbors are as concerned about the prospect of opening the border as Armenia. The transport ministers of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia met on May 24 to discuss the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway project.

An intergovernmental agreement on creating a railway corridor Baku-Tbilisi-Akhalkalaki-Kars was drawn in February 2007 by Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey. The project includes the construction of a 98-kilometer Kars-Akhalkhalaki railway section, of which a 68-kilometer stretch will run through Turkey, and 30 km through Georgia.

The project also envisages the reconstruction of the Akhalkalaki-Tbilisi section, for which Azerbaijan has given a long-term preferential loan of $200 million. Construction works as part of that project will require an estimated $422 million ($202 million for the Georgian section, and $220 million for the Turkish one.) The project budget including the provision of adjacent infrastructure is more than $600 million. The railway is expected to become operational by mid-2011.

Why, however, did all of a sudden the transport ministers of the three states urgently meet in Turkey?

The thing is that in the highlight of a possible opening of the Armenian-Turkish border and the quite real prospect of the re-operation of the Gyumri-Kars railway road, the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project becomes almost completely pointless.

And it is not only about all the assets invested in that project. Apart from other things the project had been designed to isolate Armenia. Washington raises objections to this project by not financing the construction and views the South Caucasus as one indivisible whole.

Armenia’s leadership knows perfectly well that possible complications in domestic affairs connected with the municipal elections can be used against them as a mechanism of external pressure. It is in this and only this regard that the “international community” is interested in the municipal elections.

Today the authorities understand that ‘flirting’ with Turkey over the border issue has turned into a real trap for them. The same can be said about the promises of readiness to settle the Karabakh issue. The only thing President Serzh Sargsyan can do now is to “freeze” the launched process of active relations in two parallel areas and govern the country “in Robert Kocharyan’s mode”.

However, Sargsyan’s predecessor Kocharyan was a more independent president and rejected all proposals to build relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan right from the outset. It is, of course, beyond Sargsyan’s strength. Or is it?

The answer to that question will become clear in the months to come…