[sassoun@pacbell.net]

Publisher, The California Courier

The title of this article, taken from Walter Scott’s epic poem, the Marmion, aptly describes the web of deceit weaved by Turkey’s leaders in seeking to create the false impression of wanting to normalize relations with Armenia.

Under the guise of opening the border and establishing diplomatic relations with Armenia, Turkish officials actually intended to: 1) extract concessions from Armenia – returning Karabagh (Artsakh) to Azerbaijan, forming a historical commission to review the facts of the Genocide, and blocking territorial demands from Turkey; 2) prevent the acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide by third countries, particularly the United States; and 3) generate a positive image in order to facilitate Turkey’s entry into the European Union.

If Turkey was sincere in its expressed desire to open the border with Armenia, it could have done so just as easily and quickly as it did when closing it in 1993. There was no need for lengthy negotiations, convoluted protocols, and parliamentary ratification. Furthermore, rather than demanding concessions, Turks should have offered inducements to Armenia for agreeing to open the border, because with closed borders, Turkey cannot join the EU.

Ever since April 22, 2009, when the first concrete step was taken by the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Turkey by issuing a roadmap for normalizing their relations, Turkish leaders continued to state that they won’t open the border with Armenia without first resolving the Artsakh conflict. Even after signing the Protocols on October 10, 2009 and submitting them to Parliament eleven days later, the Turkish government still insisted that the border would remain closed until Artsakh was returned to Azerbaijan.

Since none of the major powers supported the precondition on Artsakh, Turkey’s leaders used the January 12, 2010 verdict of Armenia’s Constitutional Court as a new excuse for not ratifying the Protocols in the last four months. Even though the Court ruled that the obligations stipulated by the Protocols complied with the constitution, the Ankara leadership expressed dissatisfaction in order to cover up its intent not to ratify the Protocols. Turkey demanded that the Court “correct” its decision, just because it had blocked the unwarranted interpretations and preconditions of the Turkish side.

Unable to convince Armenia to meet their demands, Turkish officials approached Russia, the United States, and Switzerland (the mediator on the Protocols) to apply pressure on Armenia “to correct” the Constitutional Court’s decision. Once again, the Turks were rebuffed.

Last week, Turkey stumbled on a new excuse not to ratify the Protocols — the announcement by Cong. Howard Berman (Dem.-CA), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, that his panel would take up the Armenian Genocide resolution on March 4.

Even though the genocide resolution is unrelated to the Protocols, a few days before Cong. Berman’s announcement, Turkey’s new Ambassador to Washington, Namik Tan, warned the U.S. Congress against such a move and boldly predicted that such a resolution would not come up for a vote “this year or anytime in the future.” Amb. Tan’s warning clearly exposed Turkey’s hidden agenda to bury the acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide at every opportunity.

Now that the genocide resolution is scheduled for a vote, what would the Turks do? They are caught in their own web of deceit! If they rush to ratify the Protocols in order to prevent the adoption of the resolution, they would antagonize their Azeri ally and create internal political turmoil. On the other hand, If they does not ratify the Protocols very soon, there is a high probability that the genocide resolution would receive congressional approval this year.

Meanwhile, Washington is losing patience with Turkey’s repeated excuses for dragging its feet on the Protocols. In retaliation, the Obama administration could use the genocide resolution as a stick to prod Turkey into ratifying the Protocols. Moreover, Turkey cannot count on much political support from Israel or American-Jewish organizations in order to block the genocide resolution, due to the incessant insults hurled by Prime Minister Erdogan at Israeli leaders over the past year.

By refusing to ratify the Protocols, Turkey has taken away from the Obama administration its excuse for not acknowledging the Armenian Genocide. Despite his repeated campaign promises, Pres. Obama refrained from using the term Armenian Genocide in his April 24, 2009 statement. He had unwisely adopted the duplicitous Turkish line that third countries should not acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, while Armenia and Turkey were trying to normalize their relations.

It is noteworthy that when Philip Gordon, Assistant Secretary of State, was asked last week to comment on the likely impact of the Armenian Genocide resolution on the Protocols, he insisted that they be ratified without preconditions. Significantly, he did not use the occasion to express any opposition to the resolution.

Any attempt by the administration to block the congressional resolution would be highly embarrassing for Pres. Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, since all three as Senators and presidential candidates had issued strong statements in support of acknowledging the Armenian Genocide.

Since Obama administration officials have repeatedly stated that the Protocols have no preconditions, then there should be no reason for them to object to the adoption of the genocide resolution.

It should be stated that in normal circumstances there would be no need for further action by the President or Congress on recognition of the Armenian Genocide which is already an acknowledged fact. In 1975 and 1984, the U.S. House of Representatives adopted resolutions recognizing the Genocide and Pres. Reagan acknowledged it in his Presidential Proclamation of 1981. However, in view of Turkey’s devious designs to roll back the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide, it is imperative that the United States government reaffirm its acknowledgment. This would also be an appropriate response to the deceptive Turkish tactics of using the Protocols to extract concessions, under the false pretense of opening the border with Armenia.

by Vladimir Socor

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has clearly reaffirmed the linkage between normalization of Turkey-Armenia relations and early substantial progress toward resolution of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. Ankara defines such progress as an agreement on withdrawal of Armenian troops from occupied districts of Azerbaijan beyond Upper Karabakh, pending a determination of the latter’s future status.

Erdogan reinforced this linkage during his December 7-8 visit to Washington, despite U.S. and E.U. attempts in recent months to break that linkage and to convince Ankara also to break it. That course of action ignored and alienated Azerbaijan, playing into Russia’s hands and jeopardizing Western strategic interests in the South Caucasus. Washington and Brussels seemed to be guided primarily by internal political considerations in adopting that policy. They will now have to reconsider it, in the wake of Erdogan’s and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s latest clarifying statements.

The U.S. agenda for Erdogan’s visit, as publicized ahead of the event (White House website, December 4) included neither the Karabakh conflict nor energy projects such as Nabucco among the issues to be discussed by President Barack Obama with Erdogan.

The first omission reflected Washington’s attempts to de-link the Karabakh conflict-resolution negotiations from Turkey-Armenia normalization. U.S. policy (seconded by that of the E.U. and Russia) pressed for Turkish parliamentary ratification of the October 10 Turkey-Armenia protocols on establishing full diplomatic relations and opening the land border between them, without conditioning this on Armenian troop withdrawal from certain Azerbaijani districts.

The omission of energy transit issues from the U.S.-prepared agenda remained without official explanation, but could be seen as relegating Caspian and European energy security to a secondary level on the White House’s list of priorities. This perception would ipso facto reduce Azerbaijan’s importance to U.S. policy in this administration, compared with preceding U.S. administrations of both parties. Obama solicited Turkish support on Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq as top U.S. priorities, while also urging Turkish ratification of the protocols with Armenia.

Obama did not mention the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict or a Karabakh resolution process at the concluding news conference. It was Erdogan who reintroduced this issue into the equation: “We have also discussed [issues] between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which are of great importance in the context of Turkey-Armenia relations…because the normalization process between Turkey and Armenia is very much related to those issues,” Erdogan stated at the joint news conference (White House press release, December 7; APA, PBS, December 8).

In follow-up statements in Washington, Erdogan recounted that he had “explained to him [Obama]” that Turkey-Armenia normalization is difficult without resolving the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. The Turkish parliament is “conditioning” the protocols’ ratification on conflict-resolution, it “feels strongly about this,” and it “cannot be dictated to,” he declared. He called for Armenian troop withdrawal from seven Azerbaijani districts and urged the “Minsk Group’s” co-chairs (U.S., Russia, France) to promote that goal (APA, December 8).

U.S. policy makers were still pressing as recently as last month for de-synchronizing the two processes. On the eve of Erdogan’s visit, however, the Turkish position had become clear. During the OSCE’s year-end conference in Athens, Davutoglu stated that the Turkish parliament can only ratify the Turkey-Armenia protocols after the Karabakh issue is resolved (Trend, December 2).

Erdogan clarified—in an interview televised in Azerbaijan––that “resolution” means, in this context, “reaching an agreement [between Azerbaijan and Armenia] regarding the seven districts….We have told U.S. officials all along: If you want to resolve the Turkey-Armenia issue, you should also resolve the Karabakh conflict. Otherwise any resolution would be impossible…The Turkish-Armenian issue and the Karabakh problems are closely related” (ANS TV cited by Day.az, December 4, 5).

The Turkish parliament’s foreign policy commission chairman, Suat Kiniklioglu, corroborated this view in a public debate in Brussels. While Turkey-Armenia normalization has the potential to dramatically improve the overall situation in the South Caucasus, “it would be incomprehensible and illogical to normalize relations on one side while maintaining a conflict on the other side” (Day.az, December 4).

Ankara was slow to clarify its position in recent months. For its part, Washington put domestic politics ahead of strategic considerations. To deflect pressures from Armenian advocacy groups and a large part of the U.S. Congress, the Obama administration decided to push for re-opening the Turkish-Armenian border before April 2010, when the Armenian genocide resolution comes up for reconsideration in Congress. Candidate Obama had promised to sign such a resolution, but President Obama cannot do so. Instead, the White House decided in April 2009 (at the time of Obama’s visit to Turkey) to press for re-opening the Turkish-Armenian land border, hoping to defuse the explosive potential from the annual political debate on the genocide issue.

This course of action, however, could only be pursued at Azerbaijan’s expense and at the risk of fracturing the Turkey-Azerbaijan partnership, instead of nurturing it. That partnership largely accounts for the West’s strategic gains in the South Caucasus-Caspian region over the past decade. Strained recently by Russian advances in the region and a burgeoning Russo-Turkish partnership, the West’s gains could be severely jeopardized by policies that isolate Azerbaijan or sacrifice its interests.

Baku does recognize—as presidential adviser Novruz Mammadov has put it (www.day.az, December 6)—that the U.S. initiative to help normalize Turkey-Armenia relations can generate positive dynamics for regional cooperation, if this initiative is synchronized with Karabakh conflict-resolution. But it would only exacerbate tensions in the region, if the two processes are separated, instead of converging.

–Vladimir Socor