AVİM

18.06.2015

The conference organized by AVIM with the title Security and Stability Concerns in South Caucasus was held on June 12, 2015, at Ankara Hilton Hotel. Representatives and the ambassadors of the foreign missions, on-duty and retired diplomats from the Turkish MFA, academicians and experts were among the audience of the conference sponsored NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division.

In the opening speech of the conference, AVİM’s President Alev Kılıç delivered a presentation on the importance and role of the South Caucasus in terms of regional and bilateral relations within the context of global geopolitics.  

In the first session moderated by the Dean of the Izzet Baysal University Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences and one of the vice president of International Strategic Research Organization (USAK), Prof. Dr. Kamer Kasım, Richard Giragosian (the head of the Regional Studies Center in Armenia), Nika Chitadze (the president of the International Security Research Center & professor at the International Black Sea University in Georgia), Efgan Nifti (expert at the Caspian Strategy Institute in Istanbul) and Prof. Dr. Mithat Celikpala (Kadir Has University in Istanbul) delivered presentations on the security perceptions and foreign policies of the countries in the South Caucasus.

In second session of session, Dr. Hüseyin Oylupınar (research fellow at Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute), Despina Afentouli (program officer at NATO Public Diplomacy Division) and Dr. Nikolai Silaev (Center for Caucasian Studies and Regional Security at MGIMO University in Moscow) presented papers on the Ukranian Crisis and its effects on the South Caucasus. This session was moderated by Prof. Dr. Mithat Çelikpala.

AVİM’s conference entitled Security and Stability Concerns in South Caucasus was a stimulating event at which foreign policies of the South Caucasus countries were discussed in the context of the global geopolitics, in particular with respect to the new dynamics that the crisis in Ukraine brought about, within a scholarly framework.