Normalizing relations and opening the border is a huge plus for Armenia, a much smaller one for Turkey, slightly helpful for Georgia, and, yes, probably a small net minus for Russia. There are Russian troops in Armenia right now, guarding that border.

Turkey gets about 20% of its total energy from Russian natural gas, BTW — important, but not “dependent”.

Meanwhile: watch for internal opposition to this deal in Armenia. It will be couched in nationalistic terms, and some of it really will be, but much will be coming from the “import barons” — oligarchs who’ve grown very rich on the current situation.

Doug M.

“Also a win at the margins for Georgia, as a larger regional role for Turkey means a relatively lesser role for Russia.”

Fairly dire, and shall I say, baseless comments. Particularly, the second one. As far as I know Russia is second Turkey’s trading partner by dollar amount. Turkey is dependent of Russian’s gas. Turkey President visited Moscow in February with large group of businessmen. Unofficial visit become the red carpet one. Turkey depend on Russian gas. If anyone think that Turkey leadership will trade it’s interest for “smaller” countries than he/she is not serious. Turkey weighting it’s interests between US and Russia, not Armenia or Azerbaijan.

I always wonder what would be political motivation for the country size of Turkey, and Russia for that matter, to enter into imperial project called EU. Given animosity and hostility which they have toward Muslims, perhaps, they are better off with Russians. It appears they are far more reliable than EU.

http://www.turkishweekly.net/op-ed/2499/why-should-turkey-normalize-her-relations-with-armenia-.html

Economically, it will be interesting to see how the Armenian markets respond to cheaper goods coming from Turkey. I know that in the Armenian parts of Georgia, profits from selling local produce have decline (if profits ever even existed) because of cheaper goods coming in from Armenia and Turkey. So this is a short-term wrinkle.

It seems likely that Obama threatened to use the ‘G’ word in his April 24 statement to get some movement from the Turks.

The devil is always in the details. A ‘road map’ is far from a final agreement.