JEOPOLİTİK STRATEJİ

Eurasia is a vast region, stretching from eastern Europe in the West to the Wall of China in the East. Its western parts has had a specific role in the development of geopolitical analysis. What Alfred Mackinder called struggle to control over the “pivot” in 1904 in a paper submitted to Royal Geographical Society, later came to dominate the geopolitical understanding of the great powers of the time and much later the superpowers of the Cold War era. Simply put, according to Mackinder, whoever controls the Eastern Europe controls the Heartland, moving ahead in the quest to achieve world dominance. The answer is B.

From a contemporary geopolitical perspective, the Caucasus is the region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and comprised of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, though the parts of Russia, Turkey and Iran could be included from a geographic standpoint. The Caucasus Mountains, where Europe and Asia converge, separates the North Caucasus, which is made up of Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai and autonomous republics of Adygea, Karachi-Cherkassy, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia-Alania, Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan within the Russian Federation, and the South Caucasus of three independent Caucasian countries. The latter was called Trans-Caucasus (Zakavkáz’je in Russian) in history from a Russian perspective, meaning the region “beyond the Caucasus Mountains”. The Caucasus Mountain range is actually made up of two ranges of mountains; the Greater Caucasus in the north and the Lesser Caucasus in the south. The watershed of the Greater Caucasus has traditionally accepted as dividing point between Europe and Asia. Consequently, while some analysts put the western portion of the Caucasus region in Europe and the eastern part (the majority of Azerbaijan and small parts of Armenia, Georgia, and Russia’s Caspian Sea coast) in Asia, some others identify the Aras River on the border of Turkey as the continental demarcation line that presents Armenia, Azerbaijan, and  Georgia in Europe. The answer is B.

During the Second World War, the Northern Caucasus witnessed intense conflicts between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and significant parts of the Northern Caucasus were occupied by German forces. Though they had to withdraw after the Battle of Stalingrad (1942-1943), cooperation of some of the local peoples with German forces led to forceful removal of various ethnic groups from the region by the Stalinist Russia after the war. The answer is D.

Dutch Disease: It is a term coined by the Economist in 1977 to describe the problems of the Dutch economy related to its one-product economy. In 1960s, after the large oil reserves are discovered in the North Sea, the Dutch oil exports increased on a vast scale. Despite the positive development, there were serious consequences on important segments of the Dutch economy as the Dutch guilder (former currency of the Netherlands) became stronger. Non-oil exports became more expensive and therefore less competitive. Moreover, between 1970 and 1977, the unemployment rates increased from 1,1% to 5,1%. Since the oil and gas extraction are capital-intense businesses, they generate few jobs. This situation occurred in many countries across the world. The Dutch disease is generally linked to a natural resource discovery but it can be related to the any sector in which there is an unexpected high increase that causes a decline in other sectors. The answer is D.

The devastation of the Caspian Basin’s ecosystem and irreversible environmental catastrophe indicates to another precarious situation for the  region. Due to the long-term destruction of environmental norms and lack of control over oil explorations, the environmental problems have aggravated since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Together with the rising sea level and the flooding of coastal areas, there are problems related to increasing saturation and greasiness of the soil that depleted fisheries in the Caspian Sea. Another long term environmental disaster in the region is the continuing destruction of the Lake Aral. It was the gigantic diversion projects of the various rivers that flew to the Lake Aral during the Soviet period to support cotton production in Uzbekistan that cut the natural flow of water into the Lake and started desertification of its shorelands. In addition, the industrial waste that was carried to the Lake with rivers thoroughly polluted water reservoir of the Lake. Today, almost %80 percent of the Lake Aral’s body of water have disappeared and the Lake is essentially divided into three smaller dirty water reservoirs. The answer is A.

The energy exploration in and around the Caspian Basin created a source of tension and a strong competition among international actors, mainly the U.S., the Russian Federation, Turkey, and Iran during much of the 1990s. While Turkey and the Russian Federation have each obtained an outlet to transport region’s energy reaches to west (Tengiz-Novorossiysk pipeline for Russia to transport Kazakhstani oil, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline for Turkey to transfer Azerbaijani oil, and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline, as well as Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) pipeline for Turkey to transfer Azerbaijani natural gas), China was able to tap Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan for its own oil and gas needs. The answer is E.

According to Mackinder, whoever controls Eastern Europe controls the Heartland, moving ahead in the quest to achieve world dominance. The correct answer is C.

West controlling did not occur after World War II,  ıt occurred after the post soviet era. The correct answer is E

During most of the twentieth century, the strategists and geopolitical experts considered these lands as the Soviet Union’s hinterland. The correct answer is C.

The Caucasus that could also be divided into the North Caucasus and the South The Caucasus, and Central Asia and one geopolitically invented region, which is name Caspian Basin that linked them together. The correct answer is D

Dual containment was an official U.S. policy during the 1980s and 1990s that aimed at surrounding Iran and Iraq, the two most strategic adversaries of the U.S. and Israel in the Middle East. Despite the fact that it was started during the Carter period, the term was officially used for the first time by Martin Indyk, the Special Assistant to the President and National Security Council, during the Clinton administration in 1994. The implementation of the policy was different for Iran and Iraq since their characteristics were different. However, the common idea was to isolate both countries regionally and to exclude them from the world economic and trading system. The case of Iraq was multilateral that included the economic and military sanctions against Iraq by the UN. In addition to the sanctions, the overthrowing of the Saddam regime was the extension of this policy. On the other hand, the U.S. had unilateral containment regime in Iran that was not supported by UN resolution. The answer is B.

The term “frozen conflict” indicates to a condition in which active fighting has ended or subsided but there is no peace agreement beyond a tenuous cease-fire. It was politically first used to refer to the conflicts that emerged in the Caucasus during the early 1990s, and continued without a solution since then, but there is no active fighting anymore along the ceasefire lines. Since then the terminology expanded to include Trnasnistrea conflict in Moldova as well. The answer is A.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group was established in 1992 by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, now OSCE) to encourage a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over NagornoKarabakh. While the Minsk Group is leaded by a co-chairmanship consisting of France, Russia, and the U.S., it also includes Belarus, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Turkey, as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan. It has not so far succeeded in finding a solution to the conflict. The answer is C.

While the direct control of the South Caucasus by Russia came to an end with the collapse of The Soviet Union, finally allowing the independence of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. The correct answer is D.

Near Abroad Policy: After the disintegration of the USSR 1991, fifteen new countries became independent: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan. Near abroad was a term used by the Russian Federation to refer to the other fourteen newly independent states. The uncertainty caused by the economic, social and political crisis limited most of the Russian objectives toward these countries in the early 1990s. Therefore, Russia developed “new abroad” policy mainly to watch over the situation of the ethnic Russians living in the newly independent states in 1990s. Originally, the main concern of Russia was about the level of influence it would obtain in these countries through ethnic Russian populations living in these countries. After 1994, it came to denote wider Russian political, economic, and other attempts to recover its earlier (i.e. Soviet era) influential position in these countries. The answer is E.

Before the Soviet Union, people in the region mainly identified themselves with their family, clan, tribe, locality, and sometimes religion. The correct answer is C

While Moldova also has Gagauz Turkish minority, they have not nurtured any separatist feelings and Gagauiza has been incorporated into Moldova as an autonomous region since the new constitution was adopted in 1994. The correct answer is B

During the Soviet era, the majority of gas and oil reserves remained unexplored in the Caspian Basin. There were two main reasons: the Soviet Union did not have sufficient technology to develop its offshore oil and gas reserves, and the leaders preferred to keep them as a strategic reserve. The correct answer is C.

Russia claimed that the legal regime of the Caspian, based on both the 1921 and 1940 treaties and the Alma-Ata Declaration of 21 December 1991. The correct answer is A

Minsk Group is led by a co-chairmanship consisting of France, Russia, and the U.S., it also includes Belarus, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Turkey, as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan. The correct answer is C.