Abstract How do we determine whether a migration is voluntary when persons organize their own displacement under the shadow of ethnic violence? I examine this question through a case study of a 1989 Soviet village exchange between Azerbaijanis from Gizil-Shafag (in the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic – SSR) and Armenians from Karkanj (in the Azerbaijani SSR), where residents negotiated their mutual relocation while operating under threats to their safety. Through analyzing competing accounts of voluntary migration, I demonstrate why the agential account fails to capture the fundamental difference between fleeing ethnic violence and migrating for career advancement. This inability makes the agential account susceptible to misuse by nationalists attempting to justify ethnic cleansing. However, the political account – which focuses on whether migration is motivated by one’s belief that one lacks objectively acceptable alternatives – not only better reflects the lived experiences of ethnic minorities facing displacement but also provides clearer guidance for migration policies.

Abstract The paper deals with “national revival” in late Soviet Armenia, seen through the lens of football, focusing on the success story of fc Yerevan Ararat in the Soviet football league. This research is based on two academic currents, one dealing with “the nationalities question” in the ussr, and, the other focusing on the relationship between nationalism and sport, particularly football. Supporting Ararat in the late Soviet decades became an experience that provided an expression for Armenian national identity that was going through a revival in the 1960–1970s. Ararat became the centre of consolidation of Armenian national sentiment in late Soviet years. The promotion of the club was part of a larger policy of the Republic’s government, which sought to strengthen the football club as a locus of loyalty and consolidation of the Armenian public. It was both a safety valve for channelling nationalist sentiment, and an instrument for strengthening Armenia’s distinct national identity. Thus, the story of Ararat-73 offers insight into the peculiar relationship between local nationalism and Soviet government policies. On the one hand, the Soviet government allowed and even in certain ways encouraged the national “revivals”. At same time, the government policies sought to contain and manage rising nationalisms.

Abstract This article explores local experiences and consequences of Russian “borderization” and “creeping occupation” along the administrative boundary line (ABL) between occupied South Ossetia and Georgian-controlled territory. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews in borderland villages, the focus moves beyond the immediate physical manifestations and geopolitical consequences and draws attention to the social effects produced by these practices. By examining the relationship between the specific political situation affecting livelihoods along the ABL and local notions of kinship and place as foundations of good lives and social continuity, the article unpacks the ways in which fundamental ambiguities and uncertainties characterizing the borderlands extend beyond the physical terrain and into intimate social relationships and practices. I conclude by arguing that in this context otherwise mundane notions of individual mobility, kinship obligations and ancestral place are infused with a sense of urgency, which takes on both existential and political significance.

Abstract The Aras River Basin, a significant transboundary river basin in the Caucasus region, is shared among four riparian countries, including Türkiye, Armenia, Iran, and Azerbaijan. Although positive measures have been taken to enhance water cooperation in this river basin, the Eastern Anatolia Project (DAP) and the hydraulic mission of Türkiye remain the primary factors that could potentially reverse the cooperative atmosphere of the basin and lead to conflict. In recent decades, Türkiye has utilised transboundary water resources to bolster its economic power, advance political strategies, and establish hydro-hegemony. Despite the significant Mega-Project and hydraulic mission of the upstream in the Aras River Basin, they have not received adequate attention in hydro politics studies. This study employs secondary sources to investigate Türkiye’s actions in the region. It discusses the implications of Türkiye’s projects on downstream riparian states in general and Iran’s water resources, including dam construction.

Abstract Drawing on the case of Georgia, this article seeks to understand better how the EU’s partners adjust to the uncertainty of the EU’s offer as part of the Eastern Partnership, and how their identification narratives evolve in response to this indeterminacy. We use the concept of liminality to capture the imprecision of the EU’s offer and the state of in-betweenness of the EU’s associated partners. Through an analysis of Georgia’s identification practices, we then shed light on how Georgian elites have pushed for an identity-driven self-representation as a key political strategy vis-à-vis the EU. We argue that such repositioning and, more recently, the tactical use of the Association Trio reflect Georgia’s approach to developing its agency in response to uncertainty.

Abstract This article explores the way a new specifically Georgian post-Stalinist art form (cheduroba, metal engraving) that emerged in the 1960s became a commonly encountered emblematic feature of the equally new urban spaces of the rapidly changing modernist Tbilisi cityscape. This new, and yet seemingly old, art form, which frequently featured the face of a traditional Georgian girl, usually a Khevsur girl from the mountains, came to be a diagnostic part of the modern urban assemblage of Tbilisi in the 1960s. This traditional face from the Georgian past became a paradoxical figure for the alliance of art and architecture in the visual aesthetics of the modern Georgian city in the 1960s, and the art form became the stereotypical “face” of a specifically Georgian post-Stalinist “traditional-modernist” public urban art. This art form soon became diagnostic of modern Georgian urban spaces, like the Tbilisi metro, which also opened around the same time in the 1960s. The recurrent distribution of this face across newly-created modernist urban spaces together formed a Georgian version of “socialist modernism,” producing a visually-experienced “brand of socialism” for urban spaces, a procession of images traditional or national (in style or theme) in socialist modernist spaces connecting the traditional architecture of the city to the modernist architectural spaces of the new socialist city of the 1960s.

Abstract This article explores de facto displacement and negative emplacement dynamics in the borderlands of the de facto state of Abkhazia. The uncertain status of de facto states creates a vulnerable, disenfranchised and rearranged post-conflict environment for ethnic minorities that are deemed unwanted remnants of the conflict. I make two arguments: First, de facto displacement is a situation of displacement where the displaced do not physically move away but where the landscape around them together with the sociopolitical situation significantly changes almost overnight. Second, that this displacement comes with negative emplacement in which a person and/or group is negatively set in place in a physical and social sense within the newly created reality of the de facto state.

Abstract This article analyzes the reconstruction of the image of Prince Kelesh Bey Shervashidze (b. 1747) in the memory politics of Abkhazia through the prism of cultural resistance, from the perestroika period up to the present day. It argues that Abkhaz politicians use a dual approach to constructing the figure of Kelesh Bey. On the one hand, an anti-colonial narrative of the prince in opposition to the Russian and Soviet colonial system is created, and on the other hand, a more traditional colonial narrative aligned with Russia’s patronage of Abkhazia’s unrecognised statehood is also encouraged. However, the controversy over these discourses is formal in nature. The only real purpose of reviving the Russian and Soviet readings of Kelesh Bey is to hide Abkhaz cultural resistance from Russia, owing to the latter’s own dualistic status as embodying both Abkhazia’s former imperial center and its modern patron.

Abstract The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war intensified the debates about regional integration and political rivalries in the South Caucasus. In the changing geopolitical setting of the region, Turkey’s regional environmental policies contradict its cooperation-based and friendly relations with the regional states. Taking a recent hydropower development project in the Kura-Araks River basin initiated by the government of Turkey as a case study, this study reviews Turkey’s transboundary water management policies in the region in connection with its political ties with the regional countries. This article argues that Turkey uses its relative power in the regional hydropolitical relations by exploiting current and historical issue-linkages and benefit-sharing options, and that the intention to act like a hydro-hegemon in the South Caucasus will negatively impact Turkey’s position in intended regional cooperation schemes and long-established strategic partnerships with the regional countries, especially Azerbaijan and Georgia.