17.01.2025
The widespread protests in our Caucasian neighbor Georgia threaten the stability of the country.
If Georgia, where street protests have previously led to overthrown of governments, is dragged into instability there may be disturbing consequences for Turkey in the Caucasus and the Black Sea basin.
The protests intensified with the adoption of a law requiring non-governmental organizations (NGOs) receiving funds from foreign countries to transparently disclose their sources. It continued with the claim that the elections held on October 26, which the opposition lost, were rigged.
Finally, it gained momentum with the government freezing EU membership negotiations until 2028.
I paid a 9-day visit to Georgia in October 2023, a year before the elections, and visited various parts of the country, including some villages. In presenting an assessment, I also made use my personal impressions.
First, let’s see how Georgia got here.
In the village we visited, the Georgian woman is making a sweet confection: walnuts on a string dipped in a grape molasses
Recent history
Georgians, who are fond of their independence, attracted attention as the first Soviet Republic to hold multi-party elections in 1990, even before the collapse of the USSR, but they went through difficult times after independence.
The country became a battleground of armed gangs and different political factions, the economy collapsed, bread was rationed, and per capita income fell as low as to $500. Separatist movements in Abkhazia and South Ossetia initiated conflicts, and these regions never came under central rule again.
When Shevardnadze, former Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, became President, public order was brought under control, but mismanagement of the economy and corruption galloped. The popular movements that started with street protests resulted in the Rose Revolution in 2003, and Shevardnadze resigned.
Saakashvili, who had the support of the US and Europe, was elected President. Strict neo-liberal economic reform policies were implemented.
At the 2008 NATO summit, Ukraine and Georgia’s membership applications were accepted. In the same year, the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia supported by Russia declared independence, and the Georgian army suffered a heavy defeat by the Russians in a war that lasted a few days. Relations with Russia plummeted, military spending increased, and the Saakashvili administration began using rude methods against the opposition.
Georgian Dream
The Georgian Dream (GR) party founded by Ivanishvili, the richest man in Georgia, won the 2012 elections with 55% of the vote, and Saakashvili, who accepted defeat, resigned. The GR won the 2016 and 2020 elections by wide margins as well (47% and 50%). Except for a year as prime minister, Ivanishvili did not take a role in the executive, remaining the strong man in the background.
Ivanishvili, who completed his university education in Moscow, entered business life after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and today his assets are estimated at $6 billion (that of Murat Ülker, the richest man in Turkey, is estimated at $5 billion).
After Putin came to power, Ivanishvili left Russia and returned to Georgia. When he founded the party in 2012, he sold all his assets in Russia and transferred them to the West and Georgia.
The GR government has been pursuing a policy that aims to establish good relations with both the West and Russia. The improvement of relations has increased trade with Russia. Exports including agricultural products and wine, tourism revenues, the number of Georgians working in Russia and revenues from transit trade to Russia have increased.
The winding roads that climb the magnificent Caucasus ranges are now struggling to support the truck convoys that pour goods into Russia.
Tbilisi has also successfully managed its relations with the West, frequently emphasizing that the main goal is to integrate with the EU. It applied for EU membership in 2022, and its candidacy was accepted in 2023.
Comprehensive reforms were made especially in health and education services. The country has been successful in terms of democracy and the rule of law.
A meaningful way to measure success is to compare it with similar countries. I created a comparison group of 14 countries by putting together the 10 EU candidate countries with 4 more that could be a part of Greater Europe in the medium-long term.
(Albania, Bosnia, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine and Kosovo, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus and Russia).
According to the World Justice Project (2024) data, Georgia ranks 49th out of 142 countries in the world in terms of rule of law and first in the group of 14. It is in a better position than EU members Bulgaria and Hungary (Turkey is in 117th place).
According to the report “2024 Atlas: Freedom and Prosperity in the World” by the Atlantic Council, a think tank close to the Washington governments, Georgia is the only country in the “free” category in the group of 14. It is in a better position than EU members Poland and Hungary.
The economy has gradually improved, and performed exceptionally well since 2020. Between 2020 and 2024, per capita income more than doubled from $4,300 to $9,300 (World Bank), representing an extraordinary 19% annual increase.
Georgia has achieved the highest increase in per capita income in the last five years (2020-2024) among the 14 countries. In the 1990s, per capita income was around 20% of Turkey, now they have almost caught up with us.
This is a clear success story.
Georgia’s “multi-vector foreign policy”, which balanced Russia and the West, was well-received by the US for a long time. According to an assessment made in 2018, Washington considered Georgia “one of its closest partners” among the former Soviet states and considered that the “strategic partnership between them was deepening”.
However, things changed when Russia started the war in Ukraine in February 2022.
The West’s rapidly altering attitude
Georgia voted for the condemnation of Russia at the UN and its expulsion from the European Council. The other two South Caucasus countries, Armenia and Azerbaijan, abstained from the same votes.
However, like a lot of countries in the world, Georgia does not participate in the comprehensive sanctions imposed by the US and the EU on Russia, and follows a similar path to that of Turkey.
The US and EU started putting pressure on the small country, and they demanded Georgia to join the West’s sanctions in their entirety, and also give the Soviet-made heavy weapons they had to Ukraine. Georgia did not accept these two proposals that would harm its economy and security.
Then, the West demanded that it end trade with Russia – while even the European countries themselves did not do something like that. For example, in 2024, the EU was the largest importer of Russia’s liquefied gas exports.
In 2023 Georgian Prime Minister Garibashvili asked, where is the logic?
“Georgia’s annual trade turnover with Russia is less than $1bn… by comparison, the European Union trades with Russia in just four days, as much as we trade in a year. Where is the logic…?”
The patent of Georgia’s “multi-vector foreign policy”, balancing Western and Russian relations, belongs to the former Ukrainian President Kuchma (1994-2005) who was the first to implement and coin it. However, Ukraine abandoned it due to pressure from Washington – and the rest is known.
Western politicians and media launched a campaign against Georgia, and allegations of questionable credibility were intensively aired. Three examples.
Allegation: Russian law
The adoption of the law requiring NGOs to declare the funds they receive from foreign countries caused severe reactions both at home and abroad.
The opposition claimed that the law copied the practice in Russia, called it “Russian law”, and started protests claiming that it would destroy the freedom of NGOs.
However, the law has no similarity to the Russian practice.
In contrast, an almost identical law has been in force in the USA since 1938 (Foreign Agents Registration Act).
There are also similar practices in more than 60 countries, including Canada, Germany, Finland, and Israel. According to reports, the EU is also working on a draft of such a law.
And in 2016, President Barack Obama signed into law the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, to launch an offensive information war.
Isn’t the Georgian regulation essentially a requirement of transparency?
More than 90% of the budgets of thousands of NGOs active in Georgia come from abroad, the vast portion of which are from the US and the EU.
An NGO is, by definition, an organization outside the sphere of a state. To what extent can organizations that receive almost all the financing from a state (its own or external) be considered NGOs?
It is also well known that many countries, especially the US, finance and use NGOs in different parts of the world in order to carry out their policies. Sometimes, they even establish NGOs for that purpose through their own intelligence services. Of course, this assessment does not cover all NGOs.
The reactions from the West upon the passage of the NGO law were not only self-contradictory, but also disproportionate.
Washington has placed some members of the Tbilisi government and GR founder Ivanishvili on a sanctions list, postponed planned joint military exercises and suspended $95 million in aid.
Brussels, on the other hand, has frozen membership negotiations, suspended all high-level talks and stopped financial grants.
Allegation: Rigged elections
As soon as the election results, in which the ruling GR received 54% of the vote and several opposition parties received a total of 38%, were announced, allegations of fraud were made by Western politicians and media, especially by the Biden administration, and harsh protests began in the country.
Polls before the election indicated that the GR would win. The International Election Observers, consisting of representatives from Western institutions such as the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, NATO, and the CSCE, released their 22-page preliminary report, and except for some irregularities, there is no suggestion of any fraud that would affect the results, especially to explain the 16% difference.
In response, the European Parliament, based on the politically motivated claims of the opposition parties, passed a resolution demanding that the elections be renewed. The Georgia rapporteur even suggested that new elections be held by the “international community” – a practice usually implemented under foreign occupation!
Brussels had tied the start of membership negotiations to unprecedented conditions: Georgia will align its foreign policy with the EU’s foreign policy; civil society organizations will participate in decision-making processes “at all levels”; Georgian Dream will share power with the opposition, etc.
Following these developments, the Tbilisi government, which believes that Brussels’ stance is incompatible with the country’s sovereignty, has frozen membership negotiations until 2028 and announced that it will not accept economic aid from the EU.
Allegation: Georgia is shifting towards authoritarianism and becoming a Russian satellite
In the data from reliable international institutions presented above, we have seen that Georgia’s democracy and rule of law scores are at a high level. In fact, the US and the EU had no complaints about these issues until the Ukraine war broke out.
The major argument of those who claim that Georgia is shifting towards “being a Russian satellite” is that Ivanishvili made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s. It is not very convincing.
To expect any significant portion of Georgian people, independent of their political views, to accept being a satellite of Russia has little connection to the realities in the country. Ambassador Hasan Servet Öktem, who served as the head of the Turkish mission in Tbilisi, writes in a pointed analysis:
“Georgians are among the countries that hate Russians the most among citizens of the former USSR… They know best that it is necessary to conduct relations with Russia without angering the “bear” and without confronting Moscow… Georgians do not deserve the second-class treatment the EU is giving to this country…”
The peak of Mount Kazbek at the Russian border
Conclusions
Evaluations from the perspective of the USA, the EU, Georgia, the Caucasus and Turkey.
– The Biden administration is implementing its “black and white” policy in Georgia, just like they did in Ukraine: Either you are with us and Russia is your enemy, or you are a Russia’s satellite.
Tbilisi said no thanks and chose its own path.
Georgia does not mean much to the American on the street, if you ask, most of them would confuse it with a state in the US. For decision-makers in Washington, Georgia is not much more than a pawn on the global geopolitical chessboard. The aim is to deal a blow to Russia.
It is obvious that if what happened in Ukraine were to repeat in Georgia, the Biden people, rubbing their hands, would rejoice that a second front has been opened. Their policy doesn’t give a damn about Georgian people.
Caucasus is very low on Trump’s agenda. Let’s see what he will do.
– Most of the EU’s mainstream parties followed the Biden administration in Ukraine, and now they are mostly the losing parties.
The competitiveness of the economy in many European countries has decreased due to rising energy prices.
The major parties left the field of formulating an alternative to Biden’s Ukraine policy, which has recklessly turned its back on every peace opportunity, to those who stand for Xenophobia and extreme ideas; in Hungary, Germany, Austria and in almost everywhere else in Europe, threatening the political stability of the continent.
The EU’s mainstream parties are mostly doing the same in Georgia.
With Trump’s return, Europe is now between a rock and a hard place.
Europe should develop a more autonomous strategic posture.
In countries awaiting membership, the EU should be more respectful for the democratic choice of voters and not adopt partisan position between the ruling and opposition parties.
– Georgian political elites have achieved what politicians in Ukraine could not, and protected their country from the destruction of war. Political cadres and voters are aware of this fact.
Government spokespeople frequently emphasized in the election that the forces they call the “global war party” want to push Georgia into war, but that they will not fall into this trap.
Public opinion polls show that this attitude had effects on Georgian voters who watch the war in Ukraine in horror. Ambassador Öktem’s comment in the same analysis:
“Georgia’s pro-EU opposition lost the elections because of the EU… Georgian voters voted for the ruling party because, among others, they believed that if the opposition won, relations with Russia would deteriorate and Georgia would, in some way, get involved in the Ukraine war.”
However, in the face of external pressures and the complex geopolitical balances of the Caucasus, the risk of Georgia falling back into the instability it experienced in the 1990s is unfortunately still not zero.
– Georgia has the responsibility of leading the South Caucasus into Greater Europe, because it is the country closest to that goal. Its success in that direction will ease the way for Armenia and Azerbaijan
Georgia should serve as a bridge between the Caucasus and Europe, and not become a source of instability in the region by turning into a battlefield.
This was also the historical responsibility of Ukraine, to be a bridge in reconciliation of West Europe and East Slavs, but it failed. Let’s hope that present trend will change.
– The Caucasus or the Black Sea turning into a conflict zone between the US and Russia would be a nightmare scenario for Turkey.
Georgia, which has a 900 km land border with Russia and a 300 km coastline on the Black Sea, is of critical importance in this respect. The Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline passes through this country.
Turkey should stand by Georgia in its current policy. It should work for Armenian-Azeri reconciliation, and then actively support the strengthening of cooperation among the three Caucasian countries.
Of course, Ankara should be open to dialogue and cooperation with Russia and Iran, the two regional countries, to the extent possible.