Ethnic Azeri child, Tekali, Georgia © Onnik Krikorian 2011

Since independence was declared by the three countries making up the South Caucasus twenty years ago it hasn't just been conflict which has defined the post-Soviet years. Human rights abuses, the sometimes painfully slow development of an independent media, and a lack of democratic freedoms have also cast a dark shadow over the region. Still locked in a bitter stalemate over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh despite hopes that progress could be registered in finding a peaceful solution to the conflict while the International Crisis Group warns of the danger of a new war, all of these problems especially come to a head in Armenia and Azerbaijan. 

For this reason, perhaps, the second event to be held in Tekali, an ethnic Azeri village in Georgia situated close to the border with Armenia and Azerbaijan, focused on democratic systems. Although intended as a symbolic center for Armenia-Azerbaijan peace building initiatives on neutral ground, one of the main purposes of holding activities in Tekali has also been to attract local NGOs to move some of their projects and meetings there in order to also contribute to development in the surrounding region co-inhabited mainly by ethnic Azeris but also by ethnic Armenians and Georgians. 

Georgi Vanyan showing participants the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, Tekali, Georgia © Onnik Krikorian 2011

Ethnic Azeri child, Tekali, Georgia © Onnik Krikorian 2011

Speaking at the latest event was Paruyr Hayrikyan, a prominent Soviet dissident and Armenian National Self-Determination Union leader who believes that current political systems need to be radically overhauled and reformed, and Zardusht Alizadeh, an Azerbaijani political analyst and Social Democratic Party leader who argued the opposite albeit while recognizing that democracy is arguably in crisis worldwide. The discussion between the two politicians from either side of the line of conflict was held in the form of a moot court as had the event which preceded it earlier this year.

In a vote held among an audience from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, Hayrikyan won with 26 votes against Alizadeh's 17 with the remainder abstaining. In the meal that followed, conversation touched upon the issues raised by the debate, but also reference to the need for peace as well as democracy in the South Caucasus. In an interview published on my Frontline Club blog in August 2009, Georgi Vanyan, one of the main organizers of events in Tekali, argued that the two are often inseparable and usually interlinked. “Churchill said that in order for corruption to flourish there is the need for an external aggressor," he said.

"Everything is calculated, including the nationalist rhetoric injected into society. The mass media is part of this too.[...] None of the dominant political parties have any programs or policies and have to fill this vacuum of empty rhetoric with something. [...] Armenians and Azerbaijanis are human beings and have a desire for peace. What we need to do is to make this public and initiate some kind of open public discussion. Instead of organizing seminars and talking to NGOs, we talk to people in the markets, or in local cultural centers.”

The point was not lost on Yuri Manvelyan, one of the co-founders of the independent ePress online publication in Armenia, in a more detailed account of the event.  

Was there more democracy and freedom in the South Caucasus after this next peace initiative, a symbolic trial, a meeting of journalists and experts from conflicting (and not so) countries? It’s hard to say. But there was more freedom and transparency in a village in southern Georgia, just north of Armenia and slightly west of Azerbaijan, than in the Marriott Hotels and Sheraton Plazas of Tbilisi, Baku and Yerevan, at an event organized by the Caucasus Center of Peace-Making Initiatives (Armenia), the Tekali Association (Georgia) and the Women’s Alliance for Civil Society (Azerbaijan).

More information on the cross-border and peace building center in Tekali can be found here. More photographs of the second event in Tekali can also be found here.

Zardusht Alizadeh (Speaker, Azerbaijan), Tekali, Georgia © Onnik Krikorian 2011

Tekali, Georgia © Onnik Krikorian 2011

Mikheil Mirziashvili (Moderator, Georgia), Tekali, Georgia © Onnik Krikorian 2011

Georgi Vanyan (Organizer, Armenia), Tekali, Georgia © Onnik Krikorian 2011

Paruyr Hayrikyan (Speaker, Armenia), Tekali, Georgia © Onnik Krikorian 2011