Vahe Davtyan: Middle East Corridor pushes back prospect of launching  so-called Zangezur Corridor even more

ArmInfo. The Middle East Corridor project announced at the G20 meeting, considering its logistics, is a serious  risk for Turkey's geostrategy. Vahe Davtyan, a PhD in political science and expert in transnational infrastructure project development, shares this opinion, when asked by ArmInfo to comment on the prospects of the new project.

According to him, it is planned to provide multimodal communication  within the corridor along the India - UAE - Israeli port of Haifa -  Greek port of Piraeus route. Thus, transport communication is being  built, which bypasses Turkey.

Considering that Turkey traditionally positions itself as a key  regional transport and energy hub connecting the West with Asia, such  an initiative is very dangerous for it. Hence Ankara's rather nervous  reaction to the communique signed within the G20. In fact, this is a  new version of the famous TRACECA ( Transport Corridor Europe  Caucasus Asia , which provides access to Central Asia and further to  China, bypassing Russia, mainly through Turkey.

By the way, taking all this into account, the expert believes,  certain problems arise for the so-called Zangezur Corridor project,  which is already heavily mythologized. It is known that the corridor  proposed by Ankara and Baku through the south of Armenia is a priori  part of the East-West transport strategy, within the framework of  which TRACECA is being implemented. It turns out that by offering new  communication between Europe and Asia through the Middle East, the  West, represented by Washington, is reducing the possibilities of  diversifying the Turkish transport strategy.

It is important to understand that the Middle East Corridor also  carries some risks for Russia and Iran - the main beneficiaries of  the International North-South Transport Corridor , along which it is  planned to provide communications along the route of Baltic region -  Russia - Black Sea- South Caucasus - Iran - Persian Gulf - India. The  presence of a new corridor with the participation of Greece will  ensure the integration of European transport networks into it.  Accordingly, the European component of the Russian-Iranian "North-  South" strategy is practically nullified, and the corridor itself  will be used only to ensure Russia's connection with the Persian Gulf  through the Caspian Sea.

As for the interests of Armenia, on the one hand, the Middle East  Corridor pushes back the prospect of launching the so-called the  Zangezur Corridor even more, however, on the other hand, actually  reduces the importance of the North-South corridor, in which Armenia  is traditionally considered as a potential beneficiary, Vahe Davtyan  noted.