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Former Turkish president Abdullah Gul has announced he would not be running in early elections, dispelling rumors of his candidacy.

Speaking in Istanbul Saturday, Gul said he would have considered running as a presidential candidate had there been “widespread agreement and desire” for him to do so. The ex-president left politics in 2014 but his name is often floated as a possible competitor to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan announced presidential and parliamentary elections would be moved forward by more than a year to June 24, catching opposition parties by surprise.

Gul, a founding member of Erdogan’s ruling party, briefly served as Turkey’s prime minister following elections that brought the party to power in 2002. He served as Erdogan’s foreign minister and Turkey’s eleventh president.
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Standing alongside Germany’s chancellor, U.S. President Donald Trump emphasized on Friday that Iran would not be permitted to build a nuclear arsenal, even if a deal intended to prevent that scenario collapsed. 

“They’re not going to be doing nuclear weapons. You can bank on it,” Trump told reporters. 

Asked about possible actions, including use of force, that he could take if Iran restarted its nuclear weapons program, if the deal made in 2015, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was abandoned, the president replied: “I don’t talk about whether or not I’d use military force.” 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, appearing with Trump at the news conference following their Friday meetings, described the JCPOA as “anything but perfect,” adding, “It will not solve all the problems of Iran.” 

She described it as one piece to limit Iran’s bad actions, while saying Berlin considered it of “prime importance” to contain threats from Iran as it exerts geopolitical influence in Syria, which has been racked by years of civil war. 

Merkel said her government would continue very close discussions with the United States as the president neared a decision on the Iranian nuclear accord, signed by Iran with China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union.

The Trump administration is required to recertify to Congress every 90 days that Iran is complying with the deal. The next deadline is May 12. 

The U.S. president repeatedly has heaped scorn on the agreement, referring to it as a “disgrace,” “stupid” and the “worst deal ever negotiated.” 

Following a meeting Friday of foreign ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), new U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters in Brussels that “absent a substantial fix, absent overcoming the flaws of the deal,” the U.S. president “is unlikely to stay in that deal.” Earlier in the week, French President Emmanuel Macron said in Washington that he did not believe he had been able to persuade Trump not to abandon the nuclear agreement. 

Asked by journalists whether he thought the U.S. president would walk away from the pact, Macron replied, “That’s my bet.” 

Macron was seen by many as the foreign leader most likely to be able to change Trump’s mind because of the warm relationship between the two. 

Trump on Friday greeted Merkel under the West Wing entry portico with a kiss on both cheeks and a handshake in the Oval Office, more affection than during Merkel’s initial White House visit 13 months ago when he appeared to refuse to shake her hand in the Oval Office. 

Merkel’s relationship with Trump remains icy, according to The Washington Post, quoting a person who was in the room when the president was with Macron on Tuesday when Trump reportedly said he was “not looking forward to Merkel coming.”

According to Peter Rashish, senior fellow and director of the geoeconomics program at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, “there was always going to be a division of labor between Macron and Merkel with Trump.”

Rashish, a former vice president for Europe at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, noted that while “Macron is a gifted public performer, Merkel thrives in close-range, behind-the-scenes meetings. The cordial tone of the press conference suggests she was able to find a way to engage Trump in a way that could bear fruit further down the line.”

Alongside Trump, during several events Friday at the White House when reporters were in the room, Merkel remained mostly stone-faced. But there were a couple of flashes of puzzlement during their joint news conference when Trump made off-the-cuff remarks in his trademark fashion. 

Trump and Merkel acknowledged they discussed other difficult matters, including the level of funding for NATO and trade tariffs. 

“We had an exchange of views,” she said when asked about steel tariffs Trump is poised to impose on European exports. “The decision lies with the president.” 

While Trump emphasized the need to bring down the EU trade surplus with the United States, the president also said he wanted to deepen economic ties with Europe, which observers saw as something new. 

Merkel on Friday restated her interest in a U.S.-EU free-trade agreement.

“Put those two ideas together and you could imagine down the road the resumption of some version of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with a more Trumpian stamp,” Rashish told VOA. 
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The Syrian civil war has been a catalyst for Russian-Turkish rapprochement, much to the concern of Turkey’s NATO partners. This, coupled with Ankara’s current strained relations with its traditional Western allies, is raising the prospect of a nonaligned Turkey.

Foreign ministers of Turkey, Iran and Russia are meeting Saturday in Moscow under the auspices of the so-called Astana process that’s aimed at resolving the Syrian civil war.

Ahead of the meeting, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu met with new U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. A myriad of differences continue to strain ties between the two NATO allies.

Speaking to reporters, Cavusoglu dismissed a threat from some U.S. lawmakers that additional measures might be taken against Turkey in light of its prosecution of U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson on terrorism charges.

Countermeasures

“I have openly told him [Pompeo] that sanctions should not be on the agenda,” he said. “These would trigger countersteps from us that would not be in our interests,” Cavusoglu said.

Washington also threatened further sanctions over Ankara’s planned purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile system.

“The S-400 sale is done,” added Cavusoglu. “We can only talk about what we can do with the U.S. in the subsequent process.”

Washington has indicated sanctions could be triggered when the missiles are actually delivered to Turkey. Moscow has already announced it is working to bring forward the delivery date to next year, from the originally planned 2020.

A picture of the ​Iranian, Russian and Turkish presidents at an Ankara summit on Syria this month exemplified Western concerns of Turkey’s eastern drift.

But a top Turkish presidential adviser sought to put a different spin on the image. “To me, that photo-op underlines the strategic importance of Turkey and shows its rise in foreign policy. This is not a shift of axis,” international relations head Ayse Sozen Usluer said in an interview with the Turkish Hurriyet newspaper Friday.

In the same interview, Usluer suggested critics of Ankara’s Moscow rapprochement were trapped in the past.

“For the last 10 to 15 years in particular, Turkey has not felt the need to choose between the West and the East, or between the U.S. and Russia,” he said. “Turkey no longer sees its foreign policy within the framework of the Cold War or East versus West alliances.”

Usluer’s comments coincided with pro-government media political commentators increasingly promoting the idea of a nonaligned Turkey.

“Pro-government commentators are saying India, Egypt, even Cyprus did this before. Why can’t we do it now?” said political commentator Semih Idiz of the Al-Monitor website.

“I don’t see this as realistic,” he said. Governments’ policies “are determined by the geography they find themselves in. I don’t think Turkey is in a situation or place in the world that it can be a nonaligned country.”

Challenging proposition

Turkey borders Iran, Iraq and Syria, and for the nearly three decades, conflicts have raged along on its southern border. Analysts suggest pursuing an increasingly independent diplomatic role will be challenging.

But Turkey’s geography also gives it leverage.

“We call it balance-of-power policy, like in the 19th century. Turkey can play the mediation between the rival counties,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University. “But we can never abandon our international alliances. We have always had alliances with our allies. We were never alone, back to World War II and the Crimean War of the 19th century.”

The current situation may well suit Moscow.

“For Russia, the target is not to fully disrupt U.S.-Turkish relations, but to keep this relationship weak,” said former senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen, who served in Iraq and Washington. But given that Ankara and Moscow are on opposing sides in the Syrian civil war and remain regional rivals, Selcen suggested Turkey would have to eventually return to its Western allies.

“Anyone looking at the map, even with no knowledge of history, can come up with the conclusion, yes, Turkey should have rational relations with Moscow and Tehran,” said Selcen. “But it cannot extend beyond a certain operational or tactical basis, given the long-term contradictory goals of those powers, especially in Syria.”
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Amnesty International says the ongoing state of emergency in Turkey has resulted in mass arrests and dismissals, and the silencing of human rights defenders through threats, harassment and imprisonment. Ankara says it is cracking down on terrorists. As Henry Ridgwell reports, opponents of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan fear elections called for June will increase his powers.
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An organization established by an exiled Russian tycoon says it has obtained emails showing collaboration between Russian government officials and the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. in 2016.

The emails the Dossier organization said it was sent suggest Natalia Veselnitskaya worked closely with a top official in Russia’s Prosecutor-General’s Office to fend off a U.S. fraud case against one of her clients.

Veselnitskaya has denied having connections to the Kremlin since her meeting with then-candidate Donald Trump’s son, son-in-law and campaign chairman. 

The encounter took place after Donald Trump Jr. was told she had potentially incriminating information about Trump’s election opponent, Hillary Clinton. 

Veselnitskaya is a well-connected Moscow lawyer, but the extent of her government ties has been unclear. 

Dossier is an arm of tycoon and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky. 

 
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel visits the White House Friday for a one-day working meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump. The meeting follows a three-day state visit to the United States by French President Emmanuel Macon.

The back-to-back visits to Washington are seen as a joint effort to persuade President Trump not to abandon the Iran nuclear deal and to grant permanent exemption of the steel and aluminum tariffs to EU member countries.

While Trump and Macron’s so-called “bromance” was on full display during Macron’s visit, Trump’s relationship with Merkel is unquestionably cooler. It is widely reported that during their inaugural meeting in March 2017, Trump appeared to withhold a handshake with Merkel, and the two leaders did not speak for five months until a phone call on March 1.

“Where Emmanuel Macron is much more successful at charming President Trump, Angela Merkel doesn’t really make the charm offensive a priority, and works instead on the basis of principle, common values, and shared interests,” said Erik Jones, director of European and Eurasian Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.

Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, told VOA he expected Merkel to take a more confrontational and adversarial approach toward the Trump administration than the French president.

“The Germans have been a lot more critical of Trump’s foreign and economic policies, and I think Angela Merkel is likely to be adopting a harder line than Macron on certain issues, but she’ll also be keen to make an effort to save the Iran nuclear deal,” he said.

“It would be interesting to see the degree to which Merkel and Macron put forth the same proposals with regard to strengthening the Iran nuclear deal,” he added.

Heather Conley, the Europe program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told reporters the visits by the two European leaders this week will be dubbed “the save the Iran nuclear agreement trip.”

During his visit, Macron repeatedly urged Trump and the U.S. Congress not to walk away from the 2015 deal the six major powers — the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Russia and China — made with Iran to curb its nuclear program in exchange for relief from international sanctions that hobbled its economy.

Trump has called the agreement crafted under the previous Obama administration “the worst deal ever negotiated.” He contends Iran would quickly achieve nuclear capability at the end of the 10-year agreement and often assails its current military activities in Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon.

Trump again called the deal “insane” and “ridiculous” during Macron’s visit, but gave no indication as to whether he will pull the U.S. out of the agreement.

Macron, however, told reporters at the end of his Washington visit that he believes Trump will withdraw from the deal, despite Macron’s appeals for the U.S. to continue to honor the pact.

“My view is … that he will get rid of this deal on his own, for domestic reasons,” said Macron, who did not cite specific reasons for his prediction.

Trans-Atlantic trade

Trans-Atlantic trade will be another crucial issue during Merkel’s visit. Jeff Rathke, deputy director of the Europe program at the CSIS, said this issue is particularly crucial for Germany.

“Germany is the largest EU economy. It is a trade-driven economy,“ Rathke said. “I would highlight that the European Union is poised to retaliate if the United States does not extend the exemption on aluminum and steel tariffs, so there is a bit of a threat there of reaction.”

Rathke pointed out Germany has the same concerns as the United States regarding China’s trade practices and economic role.

“The question is whether they can put aside the relatively less important trans-Atlantic trade disagreements and focus on addressing those much larger and longer term issues “ he noted.

Other issues expected to be discussed during the bilateral meeting include the importance of the NATO alliance and the way forward in Syria.

Johns Hopkins University professor Erik Jones said he doesn’t think the Europeans have high expectations of changing Trump’s mind on these issues at the end of Merkel’s visit.

“If they get an extension of the waiver on U.S. sanctions, that’s a big deliverable; if they were to get a formal commitment to extend the exemptions on steel tariffs, that would be a deliverable; if they were to get a firm commitment on a potential to restart Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) talks; that would be a deliverable as well,” he said. “I don’t think they are bringing a big bag to carry these things home with.”

“I think they are going to bring a very small folder and hope they’ve got at least something in it when they leave at the end of the day,” he predicted.
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Outraged Spaniards filled the streets across the country Thursday to march against what many considered to be the light punishment for five men charged with raping a teenage girl in 2016.

The three-judge court in Pamplona sentenced the defendants to nine years in prison for the crime of sexual abuse, instead of the 22 years they could have gotten if convicted of rape.

Protests against the verdict erupted in Pamplona and soon spread to other major cities, including Madrid and Barcelona.

Marchers banged on pots and chanted “No means no” and “It’s not abuse — it’s rape.”

“I am asking myself what is happening with the justice system in Spain and in the world,” a female student from Madrid told reporters. “It is mind-blowing, what is happening here. This is a clear example that the masculine laws rule.”

The five defendants, who had dubbed themselves “The Pack,” were accused of dragging the 18-year-old victim into a building in Pamplona, raping her and capturing their crime on smartphones. They were also accused of stealing the young woman’s cellphone to stop her from calling for help.

Under the Spanish criminal code, rape is classified as a violent crime, while sexual abuse means there was no violence.

The defense argued the sex was consensual; prosecutors said it was not.

In addition to prison time, the judges ordered the five men to pay the victim $61,000. Their lawyers can appeal.
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Three U.S. senators introduced a measure Thursday aimed at blocking the transfer of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to Turkey, a NATO ally and one of nine partner nations involved in producing the high-tech, radar-evading aircraft.

The bill, by Republicans James Lankford and Thom Tillis, and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, comes at a time of deteriorating relations between the United States and Turkey, which supported the fight against Islamic State but has become increasingly worried about U.S. backing for Kurdish fighters in north Syria.

The three senators, in introducing the bill, issued a statement expressing concern that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had embarked on a “path of reckless governance and disregard for the rule of law.”

“Turkey’s strategic decisions regrettably fall more and more out of line with, and at times in contrast to, U.S. interests. These factors make the transfer of sensitive F-35 technology and cutting-edge capabilities to Erdogan’s regime increasingly risky,” Lankford said in the statement.

The Turkish embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Erdogan declared a state of emergency in Turkey following an attempted coup in July 2016. Since then, he has detained tens of thousands of people, cracked down on dissent, and carried out purges in the military and bureaucracy. He charges that followers of a U.S.-based cleric were behind the coup attempt.

Erdogan has been a key U.S. ally in the fight against Islamic State but sent troops into the Kurdish-dominated Afrin region of northwestern Syria earlier this year and threatened to quash U.S. plans for a local security force in northern Syria.

The three senators voiced concern about Turkey’s detention of an American evangelical preacher, Andrew Brunson, a long-time resident of Turkey who was jailed during Erdogan’s crackdown.

“President Erdogan’s choice to take hostages and imprison innocent Americans, to try to gain leverage over the United States, is egregious and unlawful,” Shaheen said in the statement.

Turkey plans to buy more than 100 of the F-35 aircraft.

Turkish companies have been involved in producing parts for the fighter, and Ankara is scheduled to begin receiving its first aircraft within a year.

The bill would restrict the transfer of F-35s to Turkey and limit Ankara from receiving intellectual property or technical data needed to maintain and support the fighters.

It would allow the U.S. president to waive the restrictions by certifying Turkey is not taking steps that would undermine NATO security and not wrongfully detaining U.S. citizens.
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NATO foreign ministers meet Friday in Brussels, where tensions with Russia are set to top the agenda. 

The summit comes weeks after Western countries accused Moscow of poisoning a former spy in Britain. Tensions were further increased following Russia ally Syria’s alleged chemical weapons attack, and the retaliatory airstrikes by the United States, France and Britain. While that military action was not organized through NATO, the bloc offered its approval at the time.

Friday’s summit will be the last big meeting in NATO’s old Brussels building before its international staff and 29 embassies move to a new $1.5 billion headquarters in June. The same challenges remain, however. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday that the primary focus would be what he called Moscow’s “dangerous behavior.”

“This includes the illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea, the destabilization of eastern Ukraine, meddling in democratic processes, cyberattacks and disinformation,” Stoltenberg told reporters.

Foreign ministers will also discuss security in the Middle East and north Africa, especially Iraq.

“We are currently planning for a training mission of several hundred [people]. They will train Iraqi instructors and help build Iraqi military schools,” added Stoltenberg.

New U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is headed to Brussels for the NATO talks ahead of a trip to the Middle East. Pompeo, who was sworn in on Thursday, succeeds Rex Tillerson, whom President Donald Trump fired last month. Trump is expected at the leaders’ summit in July. Analysts say NATO allies will be hoping for further reassurances of U.S. commitment.

Enlargement also is on the summit agenda, with Ukraine restating its ambitions to join the organization. At a Kyiv security conference last week, NATO’s deputy secretary-general, Rose Gottemoeller, offered measured encouragement to her hosts.

“I think those are very important and realistic goals but I’m not going to hide from you that you have a lot of heavy lifting to do before you are ready for NATO membership. Important reforms have to be carried out. They are the reforms of defense institutions, the security institutions,” said Gottemoeller.

The conflict with Russia has driven a big change in Ukrainians’ attitudes toward NATO, according to Orysia Lutsevych of Chatham House, a London-based policy institute.

“If you compare the public support before the war with Russia and now, it almost doubled. So, there’s also a public support for that policy. Now again, as with many things in Ukraine, the devil is in the implementation. And if Ukraine manages to pool all the necessary human, financial resources and proper coordination, then I think it has a success story to tell to its NATO partners,” said Lutsevych.

Ukraine’s admission would open up a new NATO border with Russia in a highly volatile region, and the process is expected to take years or decades. NATO’s secretary-general emphasized Thursday that dialogue with Moscow was crucial, adding that the organization was working toward a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council. That forum was suspended in 2014 following Russia’s forceful annexation of Crimea.
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With President Donald Trump hosting two major European leaders at the White House this week, analysts and body language experts are paying close attention to the contrasts in his warm embrace of French President Emmanuel Macron and his past frosty exchanges with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine takes a closer look at what Trump’s “bromance” with Macron, and his more distant relationship with Merkel might mean for U.S. diplomacy.
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Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte survived a censure vote in the early hours of Thursday called by lawmakers who believe he withheld information about how his Cabinet reached an unpopular decision to scrap a tax on dividends.

Almost all opposition lawmakers believe Rutte misled them when he said in November he did not remember there being any memos prepared during negotiations on the issue. On Tuesday, the government released nearly 60 pages of documentation uncovered after a freedom of information request.

A motion denouncing Rutte’s handling of the matter failed to gain a simple majority in the 150-seat house with 67 votes in favor and 76 against. Seven legislators did not cast votes.

The decision to scrap the tax was part of a successful campaign to entice Unilever to choose the Netherlands, rather than Britain, for its head office. The documents showed Unilever considered the tax cut “decisive.”

The affair became the center of a political storm for Rutte, who had repeatedly said he had no memory of documents showing the decision-making process Rutte admitted during roughly eight hours of debate that ran past midnight Wednesday that he had “made a mistake” by telling parliament he could not remember and later finding out the memos had been used in negotiations.

“The Prime Minister has given us no transparency, no full answer, but has twisted around the truth like a slippery eel,” opposition leader Geert Wilders said in parliament before the vote.

But coalition partners defended Rutte’s lack of memory, saying the decision to drop the dividend tax was not a contentious topic during the government talks.

“There was no long clash about the proposal, so I have no strong memories of the process,” Christian Democrats leader Sybrand van Haersma Buma said.

The cut was announced in October as part of the governing pact of Rutte’s new center-right government. The government explained the decision as a step to promote employment and attract foreign businesses, while the opposition criticised it as a 1.4 billion euro ($1.71 billion) boon to foreigners.

Until last week, Rutte maintained he could not remember seeing any detailed written documents prepared during coalition talks last summer explaining pros and cons of the tax cut.

After a freedom of information request revealed that such documents did exist, Rutte said they could not be released because they were confidential.

He bowed to pressure on Tuesday night, and the government published a file of 12 memos, totalling more than 50 pages, outlining a months-long internal decision process.

The documents, prepared by officials in Rutte’s previous cabinet for the coalition talks that kept him in power, showed senior politicians initially opposing scrapping the tax only to be persuaded as big firms made their case.

Royal Dutch Shell has said it consistently opposed the tax. The press office of Unilever in the Netherlands was not immediately available to comment on Wednesday.
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U.S President Donald Trump Tuesday praised the strength of America’s partnership with France — and the personal friendship he has developed with his French counterpart. President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Washington will be closely followed by the arrival of German Chancellor Angela Merkel later this week. And, as Henry Ridgwell reports from London, the two European leaders are lobbying hard for Trump to shift his position on trade tariffs and the Iran nuclear deal.
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Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov is today one of the most renowned figures of the Russian opposition and was the organizer of the recently concluded Free Russia Forum in Vilnius. In an exclusive interview with Voice of America’s Russian service about the latest dramatic events in Yerevan, he said that the will of the people in Armenia for change was a key factor in the development of the situation in that country.

“History is not over, but there is one very important lesson we can learn from there: When people are lied to, they get tired of it; when they are ready to defend their freedom and their right to choose who will lead them, power retreats,” said Kasparov, who is half-Armenian. “The main lesson is that it’s a demonstration of the unity of the nation. When we see students, workers, priests, some in the military [participating in the protest], it makes it impossible for the authorities to suppress it by force.”

Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan resigned unexpectedly Monday after days of protests against him by opposition supporters who claimed he was clinging to power after serving the maximum 10 years as president.

Armenia’s turmoil deepened Wednesday as tens of thousands of people took to the streets after the opposition accused the ruling Republican Party of refusing to cede power following Sargsyan’s departure. Later in the day, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the Republican Party governing partner, announced that it had quit Armenia’s ruling coalition, calling for the election of a prime minister with “the people’s confidence.”

​Domestic focus, honest elections

In a region dominated by “strongman” politics, the grass-roots demonstrations, which protest leaders have been careful not to paint as pro-Western or anti-Russian, are focused on a domestic agenda led by honest elections.

Armenia, which seceded from the Soviet Union in 1991, has, like neighboring Caucasus nations, struggled to overcome the legacy of central planning and remains dependent on Russia for aid and investment.

But Kasparov believes that prevailing conditions in Armenia are nonetheless specific to that country.

“It is a special situation there: a practically monoethnic state, three decades of war — one day sluggish, another day turning into a more acute phase,” he said. “There is the Karabakh clan [Karabakh military], and there is the Yerevan party — that is, there are many specific factors that do not apply to Russia.”

The opposition figure also noted that Russia’s powerful influence on the situation in Armenia continued. Russia, which maintains a military base in the country, has said that it is “very attentively observing what is happening in Armenia,” but ultimately considers the unrest a domestic issue.

On Wednesday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling on political forces in Armenia to engage in dialogue and act within the law to resolve the situation. They also dismissed any parallels to events that inspired Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan revolution.

The United States responded to developments by thanking Sargsyan for his many years of service and called for a transparent democratic process to determine his successor.

Russian influence

“Armenia is effectively under the all-powerful influence of [President Vladimir] Putin’s Russia, and it is clear that the majority of enterprises are one way or another controlled by Russian oligarchs. These ties were formed over a very long time, including military ties,” Kasparov said. “Armenia, unlike Ukraine, has no borders with the West. It is trapped between Azerbaijan, Turkey; Iran, Georgia are also there; you can’t go too far [without reaching] either Turkey or Russia, if we talk about the border.”

Nevertheless, according to Kasparov, Sargsyan’s resignation is a bellwether for Russia.

“Today, the whole world is in motion. Revolutionary changes are taking place everywhere,” he said. “Many of them are negative and destructive, but it is clear that we have entered a period of change. Armenia, I think, is a bellwether, showing that attempts to preserve the situation in Russia, attempts to return to the past … all the same end with a revolutionary explosion. Armenia is simply this bellwether indicating that change is inevitable. And the question is how peaceful and nonviolent these changes will be.

“Armenia has avoided, largely due to its national peculiarity, bloodshed and violent confrontation/ The extent to which this is possible in Russia is difficult for me to say. I fear that we missed the possibility for such a peaceful, nonviolent transition in 2011-2012, and that the changes in Russia will, of course, be more volatile.”

Thus, he said, it is necessary to prepare for such changes.

“It is necessary now, it seems to me, to think about what will happen in Russia when the day comes that patience completely runs out,” Kasparov said. “Why will that happen? There are landfills that make it impossible to breathe, corruption is monstrous, a sharp deterioration in living standards, banking collapses. There are many examples in history when such a combination of factors produced this explosive combination. And what needs to be done, I think, is what we talked about at the last Free Russia Forum in Vilnius: We need to prepare for this moment in order to propose a plan of action.”

​Darker outlook for Russia

While former Soviet republics such as Armenia may see long-term political changes emerge from this week’s protests, Kasparov believes that the situation in which changes could arrive in Russia is less favorable than the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“We cannot again, as in 1991, be caught by surprise. That will be unforgivable,” he said. “Because if at that time it was unexpected — and any change then seemed good — then today Russia has no such window of opportunity. There is no such upside. There was still economic and industrial potential then, but today the situation is different. It is much worse. Russia is mired in corruption, industrial devastation and wars. And its international reputation is actually much worse than it was 27 years ago. And society does not have the potential for change, the desire to make the country better, the desire to become part of the civilized world.”

“The most important task now is to talk seriously about constitutional reform, about what Russia should look like, what will be the path of this transition,” Kasparov said. “We have our own economic, political, social and foreign policy factors, and we need to take them all into account in order to have a sufficiently well-articulated program of action that can be proposed. The person that offers a program of action — even if it is, as articulated, radical in the opinion of many — is usually the one that inspires the people to follow.”

This story originated in VOA’s Russian Service.
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