Category: Main Issues

Yerevan Tight-Lipped On Turkish-Armenian ‘Roadmap’

Football fans at Yerevan’s Hrazdan stadium pictured during the Armenia-Turkey match on September 6, 2008.

24.04.2009

Emil Danielyan, Tatevik Lazarian

Armenia’s leadership remained tight-lipped on Friday about details of a potentially ground-breaking agreement with Turkey despite growing pressure from the domestic opposition concerned about its possible implications.

The Armenian government stopped short of explicitly denying the purported specifics of the “roadmap” for the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations that were reported by Turkish newspapers.

According to the “Sabah” daily, Armenia will formally recognize its existing border with Turkey and agree to the formation of a joint commission of historians tasked with studying the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. It said historians from other countries could also join the commission. Turkey will in return gradually establish full diplomatic relations with Armenia and reopen the Turkish-Armenian frontier closed it 1993, reported “Sabah.”

Another paper, “Hurriyet,” claimed that the lifting of the Turkish blockade will be contingent on a breakthrough in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process. “It would be up to Turkey to decide whether to open the gate,” it wrote on Friday.

Commenting on the “Sabah” report, Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman Tigran Balayan said: “One should trust information about such serious issues only if it comes from official sources.” He did not elaborate.

Armenia’s two main opposition forces demanded, meanwhile, the immediate disclosure of the “roadmap” which the two countries’ foreign ministries announced in a joint statement on Wednesday night. The statement said Ankara and Yerevan have agreed on a “comprehensive framework for the normalization of their bilateral relations” but did not give any details.

“The Armenian authorities do not have the public mandate to make such statements and have in effect put Armenian national interests at risk by abusing the principle of confidentiality [of the talks,]” the opposition Zharangutyun (Heritage) said in a statement. It condemned the fact that the agreement was announced on the eve of the annual commemoration of the Armenian genocide.

A similar statement was issued by the larger Armenian National Congress (HAK). “We demand that the authorities immediately disclose that document,” Levon Zurabian, a top HAK representative, told RFE/RL on Friday.

“I am concerned that this statement could stop more countries recognizing the genocide,” said Stepan Demirchian, another HAK leader. “We support the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations but not at the expense of our national dignity.”

The HAK and its top leader, former President Levon Ter-Petrosian, are strongly opposed to the idea of Turkish and Armenian scholars jointly determining whether the 1915-1918 mass killings constituted a genocide. “If there is such a thing in that document, it is unacceptable to us,” said Zurabian.

That Yerevan agreed to the establishment of a Turkish-Armenian body dealing with historic disputes was seemingly admitted by President Serzh Sarkisian in an interview with “The Wall Street Journal” earlier this week. “You are asking what questions can be addressed by that historical sub-commission,” he said. “I can give you one example. The historic Armenian monuments in the Ottoman Empire and today. There are thousands of such monuments. I am sure that Turkey would have many questions to raise with us.”

When asked whether that can include the genocide issue, Sarkisian replied: “We cannot prohibit Turkey from raising any issue in any of the sub-commissions, just as they cannot limit us in raising any issue.”

The Armenian leader also hit out at Turkish Prime Minister Recep for repeatedly stating this month that Ankara will not normalize ties with Yerevan before a solution is found to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. “I think already now the motivation of Turkey has decreased, because as you said Prime Minister Erdogan is now offering preconditions,” he said, speaking two days before the announcement of the “roadmap.”

Sarkisian further made clear that he will not visit Turkey this October for the return match of the two countries’ national soccer teams if the Turkish-Armenian border is not reopened or about to be reopened by then. “I was not supposed to travel to Turkey as a simple tourist or as a football fan,” he said.

The prospect of a breakthrough in Turkish-Armenian relations prompted renewed concerns from Azerbaijan, which maintains that their unconditional normalization would deal a heavy blow to its positions in the Karabakh conflict. Turkish President Abdullah Gul phoned his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliev late Thursday in a bid to address those concerns.

“There is no misunderstanding in our relations,” Gul told journalists on Friday. “We are in agreement that everything that is being done is of advantage to both our countries, Azerbaijan and Turkey,” he said, according to news agencies.

Erdogan, for his part, appeared to downplay the significance of the Turkish-Armenian understandings. “We will not take any steps that will hurt our [Azeri] brothers,” “Hurriyet Daily News” quoted him as saying. “There is nothing that is signed but a finalized protocol.”

https://www.azatutyun.am/a/1615483.html

April 24, 2009
Opening of Armenia-Turkish border weakening Russian influence

By Messenger Staff

Thursday, April 23

Alexander Skakov from the Russian Institute of Strategic Research thinks that opening the Turkish and Armenian border will hamper Russian attempts to bring Armenia under its influence.

Today Armenia is under the Russian sphere of influence because it is confronting Azerbaijan and Turkey. Its connection to the rest of the world through Georgia is partly blocked and therefore the basis of its communications is Iran.

The Americans think they can offer Armenia better options and thus attract it into the US sphere of interest. Skakov says that if Armenia receives direct access to the Turkish coast, Black Sea and Mediterranean it will engage in more direct trade with the West, bypassing Russia. The West will also guarantee Armenia’s sovereignty. Skakov thinks that after opening the border with Turkey Armenia will become less dependent on Russia and more on NATO and the EU.

Source: www.messenger.com.ge, 23 April 2009

April 24, 2009
Turkish Cypriots Serve Notice on Peace Talks

Hugh Pope

23 April 2009

After the morale-raising 6-7 April trip to Turkey by U.S. President Barack Obama, Turkey is back to facing the reality of its tough neighbourhood: last-minute stresses in its hopeful recent talks on normalisation with Armenia (see our 14 April 2009 report), isolation for Turkey at the 4-5 April NATO summit as it resisted the eventual choice of a new secretary general and now new challenges for the ongoing talks on a Cyprus settlement, a dispute which, left unsolved, remains Turkey’s biggest obstacle on the road to the EU.

In parliamentary elections on 19 April, Turkish Cypriots gave victory to the right-wing nationalist National Unity Party (UBP – Ulusal Birlik Partisi), handing it 44 per cent of the vote and 26 of the 50 seats. They voted out the ruling left-wing Republican Turkish Party (CTP – Cumhuriyetçi Türk Partisi), giving it 29 per cent of the vote and 15 parliamentary seats. After years in which Turkish media has all but ignored Cyprus, victory for the Turkish Cypriot opposition suddenly put the issue centre stage for commentators and politicians – some of whom used it to argue that it showed how the ruling AK Party’s “defeatist” policy of compromise with Greek Cypriots and the EU had failed.

In fact, the Turkish Cypriot results did not reflect new disapproval of the modest achievements of inter-communal talks in progress since September (see our 23 June 2008 report), but rather represented frustrations over domestic governance and the steep local economic downturn. UBP’s policy options are limited, too. It will have to trim its sails to the winds from Turkey, which finances much of the Turkish Cypriot administration, runs Turkish Cypriot security and has been supporting a compromise Cyprus settlement since 2004.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan immediately warned the new Turkish Cypriot government not to upset the inter-communal peace talks. Turkish President Abdullah Gül repeated Ankara’s strong support for the firmly pro-settlement President Mehmet Ali Talat, who is responsible for negotiating on behalf of the Turkish Cypriots. The UBP has quickly promised to support the talks, has toned down its anti-European Union rhetoric and has softened its old policy of a two-state solution to one that has confederal elements.

Still, there remains a risk that UBP returns to its long-time role as the party of hardline nationalists including the retired former President Rauf Denktas, and that it voices demands for extreme self-determination that are anathema to the Greek Cypriot side. Such ideas are already being encouraged by the Turkish opposition, whose nationalists are urging Turkish Cypriots to forget the “false paradise” of compromise.

New pressure is clearly on Talat and his Greek Cypriot counterpart Demetris Christofias to show results sooner rather than later. Talat, the former leader of the CTP, faces re-election in April 2010. Christofias won a strong mandate for a settlement when he was elected to a five-year term in February 2008, but nationalist hardliners in his main coalition partner, DIKO, dominated elections for senior party posts in March. The new Turkish political interest in Cypriot events is partly the result of Turkish local elections on 29 March, in which Prime Minister Erdogan and his ruling AK Party saw their grip on power slip slightly.

Here again the main reason appears to be frustration with economic woes, as well as Erdogan’s legendary displays of impatience with his opponents and the government’s attempts to minimize the impact of the global crisis. Even if Turkey’s banks appear to have weathered the worst of the financial storms, the Turkish economy contracted sharply in the first quarter of 2009 for the first time after six years of uninterrupted economic growth. Exports fell by one third and unemployment surged to a record high. More than one quarter of Turkey’s youth is now out of work.

In the election, AK Party won 39 per cent of votes for provincial councils, versus 47 per cent in the parliamentary elections of 2007 and 42 per cent in the last local elections. In Turkey’s fractured political system, 39 per cent remains a high figure and rules out bringing the next parliamentary elections forward from 2012. But this is Erdogan’s first electoral setback of any kind. On election night, he admitted he was unsatisfied and would be drawing the necessary lessons.

Notably, AK Party lost strength in Western and coastal districts, progressive parts of Turkey that usually point to where Turkey’s future lies. The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) scored 36 per cent in the country’s cultural and financial capital, Istanbul, and captured Antalya and other major tourism centers along the Turkish riviera. Some commentators believed that this was a reaction to a perceived threat to contemporary lifestyles by the conservative AK Party’s pro-Islamic tendencies. Overall, CHP came second with 23 per cent of the vote. The right-wing National Action Party (MHP) also experienced a surge in its vote to 16 per cent, scoring high among unemployed youth. The ultra-conservative Felicity Party scored 5.2 per cent with its specifically religious messages.

The Kurdish nationalist Democratic Society Party (DTP) won just 5.6 per cent of the national vote, but it displaced AK Party as the top vote puller in the mainly Kurdish southeast and dramatically beat AK Party in a high-profile battle for the main southeastern city of Diyarbakir, where it won 65 per cent of the vote, up from 43 per cent.

Turkey’s EU negotiator and AK Party minister Egemen Bagis said that the result was “just great” considering the financial crisis and the wear and tear of AK Party’s seven years in power, noting with some justification that the distribution of results proved that his party dominated the political centre and was the only one able to attract votes all over the country. He said that upcoming three years with no elections meant that “now is the time to do reforms.” He said this would have to be in consultation with the opposition CHP, and listed as priorities reform of the political parties law, the election law, and urgent legal preparations to allow two chapters of the EU negotiations to open in June. AK Party leaders suggest they will first work to make it harder to close down political parties, an area where Turkish democracy is particularly vulnerable.

Olli Rehn, EU commissioner for englargement, did not mince his words in a 31 March speech to the joint EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee. “The main ‘fuel’ of the process remains reforms in Turkey,” he said. Citing threats to freedom of expression, he specifically criticized the government for its $500 million tax charge in February on the Dogan media group. He sought more respect for women’s rights and Christian religious institutions. He warned was that “it is now time that Turkey takes the necessary steps, including changes in the Constitution, to align Turkey’s legislation with the guidelines of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe and European best practices. This is essential to respect the Copenhagen criteria.” Finally, he called for Turkey to put all its weight and support to the UN-led process on Cyprus, since a settlement there had the most direct impact on clearing obstacles on Turkey’s path to the EU.

April 24, 2009
Will Obama Recognize ‘Armenian Genocide’?

Speaking to the Turkish parliament, President Barack Obama said his views on the Armenian killings “are on the record and I have not changed my views.”

April 24, 2009

(RFE/RL) — The U.S. president is confronted with a tough choice.

Does he choose the first April 24 of his term in office to fulfill his campaign promise to recognize the killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide?

Or does he put off his promised recognition for fear of angering Turkey and jeopardizing the improving relations between Yerevan and Baku?

The White House has given no hint of how it will act. But act it must. U.S. presidents for years have marked April 24 with a statement issued to the press and Obama must observe that tradition.

So far, no U.S. president has marked April 24 by declaring he recognizes the slaughter of Armenians as genocide. U.S. presidents have used the occasion of their annual message to Armenians to describe the events as mass killings, a calamity, or a tragedy — but not genocide.

Only Ronald Reagan came very close to recognition. He included Armenians in his statement on April 22, 1981, observing “Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust.”

“Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it — and like too many other such persecutions of too many other peoples — the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten,” Reagan said.

Mounting Pressure

The pressure on Obama to still more clearly single out the Armenians as victims of genocide are high.

The president’s home state, Hawaii, on April 6 declared April 24th as a “Day of Remembrance in Recognition of and Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide of 1915,” making it the 42nd of the 50 U.S. states to take such a step.

And on March 17, a group of U.S. congressmen sponsored a resolution for Washington to officially declare the killings as genocide, as Canada and France have done.

But if pressure is high, it does not only come from one direction.

People lay flowers at the genocide memorial in Yerevan.

Turkey has long made it clear that it views what happened to Armenians in the World War I era as not the business of third parties.

Ankara sent a strong reminder of its position this week, saying on April 22 it had recalled its ambassador to Canada after Ottawa reaffirmed its position that Armenians were victims of genocide.

Obama is well aware he walks a tightrope.

His administration is trying to give impetus to the still delicate rapprochement drive between Armenia and Turkey. And Ankara has made it clear that any genocide statements in Washington would set back that process.

Sensitive Talks

Washington hopes Turkey will reestablish diplomatic relations with Yerevan that Ankara broke off in 1993 following Armenia’s war with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. The United States also wants Turkey — a NATO partner — to reopen its border with Armenia, something that would restore Armenia’s shortest land trade route to Europe.

Those steps are seen as helpful for stabilizing the South Caucasus, an area which has become a major worry for Washington following Russia’s August war with Georgia. U.S. officials see Moscow as trying to reassert its influence in the volatile but energy-important region at the West’s expense.

U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood underlined Washington’s hopes for the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement as he welcomed on April 23 an announcement by Turkey and Armenia that they intend to normalize relations.

“What’s important here is the fact that Turkey and Armenia have basically decided to normalize their relationship. To us, that is a huge step,” Wood said.

“They’re basically saying that we’ve got to move on from the past; we need to reconcile. While there are still going to be differences of opinion, it’s clear that these two governments have taken the very difficult step to move that relationship forward.”

Ankara and Yerevan announced jointly on April 22 that they “have agreed on a comprehensive framework for the normalization of their bilateral relations in a mutually satisfactory manner.” They did not provide details.

Moving Forward

In his visit to Turkey earlier this month, Obama appeared to signal that he might not see this anniversary as the time for a genocide statement if Turkey and Ankara were making progress toward rapprochement.

Speaking to the Turkish parliament on April 6, he said his views “are on the record and I have not changed my views.”

Urging Ankara and Yerevan to work together, he said, “what I want to do is not focus on my views right now but focus on the views of the Turkish and the Armenian people.”

He added, “If they can move forward and deal with a difficult and tragic history, then I think the entire world should encourage them.”

Turkey and Armenia remain far apart on the question of what happened to the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, despite the fact April 24 now commemorates events that began almost a century ago.

Armenia, and genocide scholars, say 1.5 million Armenians died at the hands of the Ottoman Turks from 1915-23 in a campaign aimed at eliminating the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire.

Armenians have made April 24 “Genocide Remembrance Day” in recognition of the same date in 1915 when Armenian leaders were arrested and later executed.

Ankara says that up to 600,000 Armenians died during World War I and during deportations out of eastern Anatolia. But it says the deaths were in the context of an Armenian uprising as Armenians sided with invading Russian troops at the time.

https://www.rferl.org/a/Will_Obama_Recognize_Armenian_Genocide/1615459.html

April 24, 2009
President Obama’s Armenian dilemma

Posted: 05:40 PM ET President Obama and Turkish President Abdullah Gul hold a joint news conference Monday.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

Armenian-Americans have April 24 circled on their calendars and they’ll be paying close attention to what President Obama says – or does not say – about that day.

Armenians call April 24 their day of remembrance, marking the day in 1915 that they say Turks began a campaign to destroy their community, a period of several years that resulted in deaths of between 1 million and 1.5 million Armenians.

The Armenians call it a genocide.

The Turks reject that language. From the Turkish perspective, there were killings, but on both sides of an ethnic conflict. World War I was underway, this was not a deliberate program to exterminate a people, the Turks say, and they claim that Armenians overstate the number of casualties.

“Race extermination” is what then-U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau Sr. called it in cables to the State Department. The word “genocide” itself did not enter the lexicon until some 30 years later.

This is a sensitive issue, not only for Americans of Armenian and Turkish descent, but also for U.S. foreign policy. For many of the more than 1 million Armenian-Americans, this is where the rubber of candidate Obama’s campaign promises meets the road of President Obama in the Oval Office.

As a senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama repeatedly stated that the Armenian genocide is fact – not myth – and that he supported an oft-proposed but narrowly defeated Congressional resolution recognizing the slaughter as “the Armenian genocide.” In a Jan. 19, 2008, campaign statement, candidate Obama said, “As a senator, I strongly support passage of the Armenian Genocide Resolution (H.Res.106 and S.Res.106), and as President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.” Those positions helped Obama win endorsements from Armenian-American organizations and community support measured at more than 80 percent.

But as President, he avoided use of the word “genocide” in front of his hosts during his recent trip to Turkey. “Well, my views are on the record and I have not changed views,” President Obama said during a news conference with Turkish President Abdullah Gul.

That left many Armenian-Americans wanting more. Obama “missed a valuable opportunity to honor his public pledge to recognize the Armenian genocide,” Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, told the Los Angeles Times.

To understand the passion of Armenian-Americans on this issue, consider this excerpt from a 2007 article by Michael Crowley in The New Republic: “Most Armenian-Americans are descended from survivors of the slaughter and grew up listening to stories about how the Turks, suspecting the Orthodox Christian Armenians of collaborating with their fellow Orthodox Christian Russians during World War I, led their grandparents on death marches, massacred entire villages, and, in one signature tactic, nailed horseshoes to their victims’ feet. . . Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge the guilt of their Ottoman forbears infuriates Armenians, leaving them feeling cheated of the sacred status awarded to Jewish Holocaust survivors.”

So Armenian-Americans anticipate April 24 and whether, now that he is in the White House, President Obama will repeat what he has said before about the Armenian genocide.

On that day, “the President has a well-timed opportunity to deliver on the change he promised, to honor the pledges he made and to affirm the U.S. record on the Armenian Genocide,” the Armenian Assembly of America said in a statement. “…we fully expect him to honor his pledge and affirm the historical truth of the Armenian Genocide. We encourage all people of goodwill to help us end the cycle of genocide denial by becoming an Ambassador of Affirmation and send a letter to President Obama,” the Assembly’s Executive Director Bryan Ardouny said in the statement.

President Obama will face the community’s expectations yet again if the House of Representatives votes in favor of a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide, a resolution that has been introduced for several years and was re-introduced in March.

That resolution calls on the President to “accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide.”

The resolution’s primary backer is Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., whose district includes the largest concentration of the nation’s roughly 1.5 million Armenian-Americans.

Crowley’s 2007 article dealt with the historical and diplomatic issues attached to the resolution and the money the Turkish government has spent to hire big-name Washington lobbyists, including former leaders of Congress, to lobby against the resolution.

“The resolution would be insulting to Turkey and would be very poorly received,” James H. Holmes, a retired U.S. ambassador who is now president of the American Turkish Council, told McLatchy newspapers. He added that “some very significant commercial opportunities” might be put at risk.

The U.S. government wants to maintain good relations with Turkey for reasons that include U.S. military basing in that country, Iraq as its next-door neighbor and its potential role in the Middle East peace process, as well as those trade considerations.

So keep watch on April 24 or thereabouts as Barack Obama finds himself caught between positions he’s repeated over the years and the challenges he faces as President of the United States.

Crowley, writing in The New Republic a couple of weeks ago, pointed out that it’s one thing to make such statements as a candidate and something altogether different to do so as President of the United States. “But the question is whether Obama reiterates those views in his official capacity. That’s what the Armenians have been desperate to see him to. And while there are sound arguments against inflaming the Turkish public with such an act, that is what Obama, as a candidate, explicitly promised he would do,” Crowley wrote.

In 1948, a United Nations convention defined genocide as acts “committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” In 2009, President Obama might have to decide whether this definition fits what happened to the Armenians nearly a century ago.

April 24, 2009
Biden’s Call with Sargsian

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Vice President

______________________________________________________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 23, 2009

Readout of Vice President Biden’s Call with Armenian President Sargsian

The Vice President spoke today with Armenian President Sargsian and welcomed Armenia and Turkey’s statement regarding their commitment to normalize their relations. The Vice President applauded President Sargsian’s leadership, and underscored the Administration’s firm support for both Armenia and Turkey in this process.

nd Turkey in this process.

April 24, 2009