Category: Armenian Question

By Emil Danielyan

In a fresh overture to Ankara, Armenia decided on Thursday to unilaterally suspend its visa regime with Turkey to facilitate the arrival of Turkish fans for the upcoming first-ever match between the two countries’ national football teams.

The Armenian government said Turkish citizens traveling to Armenia from September 1-6 will not require entry visas. “The decision was taken to enable citizens of the Turkish Republic to attend the September 6 game between the football teams of Armenia and Turkey to be played in Yerevan,” read a government statement.

Armenia and Turkey were drawn into the same European group of the qualifying campaign for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and are scheduled to play each other in Yerevan and Istanbul. The two teams have never faced each other before.

The forthcoming match in Yerevan’s Hrazdan stadium will come amid renewed hopes for a normalization of relations between the two bitterly estranged neighbors that have no diplomats relations and open border. Ankara offered to embark on a “dialogue” with Yerevan shortly after Armenia’s February 19 presidential election controversially won by Serzh Sarkisian. The latter responded positively to the offer, calling for a “fresh start” in Turkish-Armenian relations.

Earlier this summer, Sarkisian signaled his government readiness to accept, in principle, a Turkish proposal to form a joint commission of historians who would look into the 1915-1918 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. He also invited Turkish President Abdullah Gul to arrive in Yerevan and watch with him the World Cup qualifier.

Gul has yet to respond to the invitation. Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said last month that Gul’s decision will depend on unspecified “developments ahead of the match.” A senior U.S. diplomat told RFE/RL on July 18 that the first-ever trip to Armenia by a Turkish president would be a “real ground-breaking moment.”

Under the rules of world football’s governing body, FIFA, a country hosting a World Cup match must set aside at least 5 percent of stadium seats for traveling fans. The Hrazdan stadium has a capacity of more than 50,000 seats, meaning that 2,500 Turks are entitled to cheering for their team there.

The decision to waive the visa regime was meant to underscore Yerevan’s readiness to allow the presence of a sizable traveling crowd at Hrazdan. Media reports in Turkey have said that as many as 10,000 local fans are eager to travel to the Armenian capital.

The Football Federation of Armenia (FFA) said on Thursday, however, that it has still not been approached by the Turkish Football Federation, which is supposed to distribute game tickets in Turkey. “We still have no information about how many Turkish football fans would like to attend the game,” the FFA’s executive director, Armen Minasian, told RFE/RL. “We have received no applications from the Turkish Football Federation yet.”

With the widely anticipated match bound to arouse nationalist passions in both countries, the presence of a large number Turkey supporters would be a major security headache for the Armenian authorities. The unusual sight of visiting fans waving Turkish flags in a stadium adjacent to Yerevan’s 1915 genocide memorial could infuriate the home crowd.

But Minasian downplayed the security risk. “The government and the FFA are taking all necessary measures to prevent incidents during the march,” he said.

(Turkish Football Federation photo: Turkish players celebrate their dramatic quarter-final victory over Croatia during the 2008 European football championship in Austria.)

 Paul Goble

Vienna, July 30 – Yerevan’s announcement that it will take part in military exercises this fall under NATO’s Partnership for Peace program underscores an important and to Moscow disturbing trend: Public statements to the contrary, all former Soviet republics now prefer to cooperate with the Western alliance rather than with the Russian Federation.
In some cases, Sobkorr.ru’s Yuri Gladysh says, they have made this choice with enthusiasm believing that it is better to have a big friend far away than a big friend next door, but in others – and that seems to be the case with Armenia – they have chosen NATO over Russia as “the lesser of two evils” (www.sobkorr.ru/news/488ED1F94EA6D.html).
On Monday, Armenia’s defense ministry announced that NATO’s September 20-21 Partnership for Peace exercises will take place on Armenian territory and that Armenian troops will participate in them, a stinging defeat for Moscow that has long viewed Armenia as its closest ally in what many Russians call “the near abroad.”
But Russian officials should not have been surprised. On the one hand, the Sobkorr.ru site reports, more than half of all Armenians now have a positive view of the Western alliance – some 52 percent in a recent poll – with only 35 percent having a negative and thus pleasing-to-Moscow attitude.
And on the other, in recent months, Yerevan has been involved in exploratory conversations with Turkey despite the centrality of the events of 1915 in the life of the Armenian nation. Indeed, Gladysh says, were it not for that historical memory, “Armenian would already long ago been among those countries oriented toward close cooperation with [NATO].
Given Armenia’s decision, the Sobkorr.ru analyst says, it is time to “honestly answer a simple question – which of the former union republics and now members of the ephemeral Commonwealth [of Independent States] is sincerely striking toward a new union ‘under the canopy of fraternal bayonets’ of a powerful Russia?”
Most observers, Gladysh continues, include Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Armenia as the most likely candidates for such a “new Union.” But an honest answer, he suggests, shows that “not one of the countries enumerated above is interested in any union on a political basis, especially, alas, under the aegis of Russia.”
Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan, he says, simply don’t need it and are increasingly directing their attention to their neighbors in Southeast Asia. Belarus is better off as an independent state so that it “preserves the possibility of successfully converting into real capital its favorable geographic position.” For those three, “Russia is not a subject of interest.”
Indeed, Gladysh suggests, Russia has “not been able to present to its neighbors” any attractive vision for their future relationship, and so they like all the other “newly independent states” are looking to the defense alliance that most Moscow officials still view as ineluctably hostile to Russia.
Armenia, he continues, “occupies in this list a special place. Despite longstanding ties with Russia and a sense that Moscow is its protector against Turkey and Azerbaijan, “this small Caucasus republic is ‘the weak link’ in the modest ranks of [the Russian Federation’s] allies.” Yerevan’s decision shows that its “patience is ending” with Moscow’s “loud but empty declarations” and that Armenia cannot expect anything from Russia. Moreover, while Armenia does not have a land border with Russia, it does have borders in the south with “an active member of NATO.”
Consequently, Gladysh concludes, “Armenia willy nilly is choosing the lesser of two evils.” And in this case, he says, “‘the lesser evil’ turns out to be close [and] constructive cooperation with the West” and with the West’s most important alliance – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“What an infuriating irony of Fate!” Gladysh says. A great deal had to be done or left undone for “Armenia to begin to turn away from its historical ally and direct its vision to its long-time opponent.” But that is what Russia has succeeded in doing, a tragedy from her point of view but quite possibly a breakthrough to a better future for Yerevan.