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  • IMPLICATIONS OF THE FAILED TURKISH-ARMENIAN NORMALIZATION PROCESS

    IMPLICATIONS OF THE FAILED TURKISH-ARMENIAN NORMALIZATION PROCESS

    Turkey Analyst,
    vol. 3 no. 5
    15 March 2010

    Svante E. Cornell

    In spite of great hopes and much foreign pressure, the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process can be said to have failed to bring about its intended result. Under current circumstances, the likelihood of the ratification of the Protocols signed in August 2009 is close to nil, barring some major turn of events. It is therefore time to reflect on the reasons that the process failed; and the implications for Turkey and the wider region. The process itself is in fact illustrative of the erroneous assumptions that Western political leaders appear to have harbored about regional realities.

    BACKGROUND: The Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process got serious on the inter-governmental level in 2008. (See Turkey Analyst, 10 April 2009 for background) Following Turkish President Abdullah Gül’s historic visit to Yerevan, Swiss mediation helped produce Protocols that would lead to the establishment of diplomatic relations and the opening of the common border. The Protocols, originally intended for signing in April 2009, were nevertheless not endorsed formally until August that year.

    Enormous external pressure – primarily from the White House – appears to have been the main reason that the Turkish and Armenian Foreign Ministers signed the Protocols. The presence at the signing ceremony of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana was indicative of the level of pressure on Ankara and Yerevan. Yet even then, the process almost broke down at the last minute, as differences on the ceremony itself led to a three hour long delay, which was only solved by shelving the intended declarations of the two signatories.

    This very delay suggested the lack of enthusiasm that had already begun to grip the Turkish and Armenian governments. Indeed, in the months that followed, it is difficult to avoid the perception that both governments – the Turkish perhaps slightly more than the Armenian – took steps to distance themselves from a process that neither felt comfortable with. In Yerevan, while the government asked the Constitutional Court for an interpretation, leading parliamentarians spoke of the need for an “exit strategy.” In Ankara, the government handed the Protocols to the parliament, but appeared perfectly happy to have it languish there rather than bring them to a vote of approval. As time passed, mutual incriminations ensued: Ankara seemed to seize on the Armenian Constitutional Court’s interpretations of the Protocols as an excuse to delay the process, while Yerevan threatened to shelve it entirely.

    By the spring of 2010, the process was hanging by a thread. Then came the passage (by a single vote’s margin) of a bill to recognize the 1915 massacres of Armenians as Genocide in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. As in previous years that this had happened, visceral reactions ensued in Turkey, including the recall of the Turkish Ambassador to Washington. More unexpected was the introduction and passage of a similar bill in the Swedish Parliament. That bill also passed by a single vote’s margin. In fact, both the ruling coalition government and the leadership of the main opposition Social Democratic Party were opposed to the bill. But because it had been pushed through as a binding resolution at the Social Democratic Party’s yearly Congress, and because four members of the ruling parties split ranks, it eventually passed. Taken together, these two resolutions stirred up emotions in the region – particularly in Turkey – adding what may have been the last two nails in the coffin of the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process.

    IMPLICATIONS: Time has thus come to evaluate why this process went wrong, and what implications are likely to emerge from this failure. The deeply negative effect of foreign parliaments’ meddling in historical truths exacerbated the difficulties in the process and may have helped kill it – if nothing else, given Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s reaction to threaten to expel 100,000 Armenian migrant workers living in Turkey. (In fact, the real number  is believed to be lower.) But as deplorable as the role of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Swedish Parliament may have been, they were not the root causes of the failure of the normalization process.

    One key reason, however, was that the process was allowed to proceed on the basis of divergent and erroneous assumptions. First, the tragedy of 1915 was a main cause of the discord between the two countries, and intimately connected with the normalization process. Ankara, rejecting the label of genocide, interpreted the Protocols as having moved that issue to a commission of historians to be created following ratification. Perhaps naively, Turkish leaders therefore expected the Diaspora Armenian push for genocide recognition to be eased – an unlikely prospect given Yerevan’s limited influence on the Diaspora, and the latter’s deep misgivings about the Protocols. But as the Armenian Constitutional Court made clear, Armenia interpreted the Protocols as in no way hindering the push for international recognition. As Armenian and allied groups kept pushing for recognition in both the U.S. and Europe, it became clear that the normalization process would not even temporarily relieve Turkey of that headache.

    The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict posed an even larger problem – but also one whose importance the Western powers fundamentally misunderstood. Turkey had originally closed its border with Armenia as a result of the Armenian occupation of the Azerbaijani province of Kelbajar – one of seven districts outside of the Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno-Karabach that Armenian forces occupied and ethnically cleansed during the war. To most Turks, therefore, some form of progress in the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations was a prerequisite for opening the border. In fact, Turkish leaders appear to have embarked on the process in the belief – entertained by American and Russian diplomats – that there was indeed a serious prospect for a breakthrough in the Armenian-Azerbaijani talks. As the AKP had not been closely involved in the conflicts in Caucasus prior to 2008, its leaders overlooked the fact that such imminent breakthroughs in the negotiations had been predicted frequently during the past fifteen years, without results. In other words, it was clear from the AKP leadership’s moves that it gambled on a breakthrough in negotiations that was never to be. (See Turkey Analyst, 14 September 2009 issue for background)

    If the Turkish government miscalculated, the West’s behavior was unrealistic. Egged on by NGOs such as the International Crisis Group, American and European leaders urged Ankara to de-link the Turkish-Armenian normalization process from the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. Positive ties between Turkey and Armenia, they argued, would lead Armenia to feel more secure, thereby more likely to make difficult concessions over Nagorno-Karabakh. Yet de-linking the two conflicts was both politically and practically impossible.

    To begin with, the Western logic did not play out. Having signed the Protocols, Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian lost a nationalist coalition partner and a good deal of domestic public support. Sarkisian thus moved to harden rather than soften Armenia’s negotiating stance in talks with Azerbaijan, putting those talks in peril.

    Secondly, whether one liked it or not, de-linking Turkish-Armenian ties from the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict was impossible in the Turkish domestic context. This has often been blamed on Azerbaijan’s supposed “lobbying” in Turkey. Reality is much simpler: most of the Turkish population and a significant share of the AKP voters and politicians (though not the top leadership) are strongly wedded to Turkic solidarity. Thus, the AKP leadership faced vehement nationalist opposition from within the party (not simply the nationalist opposition) to ratifying the Protocols without some progress on the Karabakh conflict. Given the close linguistic ties between Turkey and Azerbaijan, the AKP leadership knew that a single camera crew, filming from Azerbaijani refugee camps to which 800,000 people had been confined by Armenian conquests, could generate a public outcry against the government should it open the border without Armenian concessions. Rather than understanding this reality and putting serious efforts behind the diplomatic endeavors on Nagorno-Karabakh, the Western powers pushed harder for Ankara to de-link the two processes.

    Stuck in the Mountains of Karabakh?

    This was all the more remarkable given the recent history of the South Caucasus. Indeed, if there was one lesson to be learned from the Russian-Georgian war, it was that the conflicts in the Caucasus were not “frozen”. They were dynamic and dangerous processes that the West had willfully ignored, thereby contributing to allowing the tensions between Russia and Georgia to spiral out of control. The Russian-Georgian war having rocked the foundations of the European security structure, the lessons for Nagorno-Karabakh were clear: left to its own devices, the conflict was at great risk of re-erupting, an event that could pull in regional powers including Russia, Iran and Turkey. Substantial revamping of efforts to resolve that conflict was in order, but the West instead decided to push it even deeper into the “freezer”.

     In general terms, this failure  may have left the region in an even more precarious position than it was before its inception. Turkish and American policies have alienated Azerbaijan – damaging Western interests in that crucial country and in the broader Caspian region. The energy partnership between Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan – which formed the cornerstone of Western policies toward the region since the Clinton Administration’s times – is in tatters, as seen in the difficulties Baku and Ankara are experiencing in achieving a transit agreement for Azerbaijani gas sales to Europe. Turkey’s ties with Armenia have also been greatly damaged. It remains unclear if the bilateral relationship can muddle along, or whether it will revert to pre-2008 levels.

    Turkey’s relations with the U.S. and Russia have also suffered. With Washington, Ankara is frustrated with the Obama administration’s  refusal to seriously try to achieve progress on Nagorno-Karabakh, and especially with its failure to prevent the genocide resolution passing in the House Foreign Relations Committee. With Moscow, Ankara had hoped for support in resolving the Karabakh conundrum; but as senior Turkish officials have stated, Moscow instead grew unhelpful, seconding the American view that the two processes should not be linked. This in turn led Ankara to doubt whether Moscow really wanted either of the two processes to see progress. Finally, Armenia’s weakened leadership is now highly unlikely to make concessions on Karabakh in the near future.

    CONCLUSIONS: What lessons does the failure of the Turkish-Armenian normalization process hold for the future? Several are in order. First, the resilience of nationalist sentiment and traditional allegiances – such as that between Turkey and Azerbaijan –should not be underestimated. Second, Western and in particular American leaders cannot expect to ignore regional realities and strong-arm local leaders into compliance with their agendas without taking a long-term and serious interest in the deeper problems of the region.

    Third, the unresolved conflicts of the Caucasus have once more showed their powerful role as an impediment to progress and stability in the entire wider Black Sea region. For a decade and a half, the Western powers have sought to achieve policy goals in the region by willfully circumnavigating these conflicts, rather than seriously working to resolve them. Ironically, relatively limited progress toward a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict would likely have sufficed to allow the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process to go forward. Instead, that conflict was the key element that derailed the process.

    In the final analysis, the failure of the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process has helped reiterate one useful conclusion. Should Western leaders truthfully seek to stabilize the Wider Black Sea region, they should know the place to start: A serious and long-term engagement to resolve rather than to freeze the region’s conflicts.

    Svante E. Cornell is Research Director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center.

    © Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center, 2010. This article may be reprinted provided that the following sentence be included: “This article was first published in the Turkey Analyst (www.turkeyanalyst.org), a biweekly publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center”.

  • Armenian President To Visit Syrian Site Of 1915 Tragedy

    Armenian President To Visit Syrian Site Of 1915 Tragedy

    AC06DCD2 A1A0 4A52 A701 C9D71CA77870 mw270 sArmenian President Serzh Sarkisian

    March 24, 2010
    PRAGUE — Armenia’s President Serzh Sarkisian is due to visit an area of Syria that was the final destination in what Armenians consider the first genocide of the 20th century, RFE/RL’s Armenian Service reports.

    Sarkisian, who held talks on March 23 with Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, was scheduled to visit the northeastern city of Deir-el-Zor later today.

    The desert surrounding the city proved the final destination for hundreds of thousands of Armenians forced out of their homes in the final years of the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago.

    Those who did not die en route met their death in camps such as Deir-el-Zor.

    In 1990, the Armenian community in Syria built a memorial complex there dedicated to the victims.

    For decades, survivors and descendants have been campaigning for the World War I-era mass killings to be recognized as genocide — a label Turkey rejects.

    On March 23, Sarkisian suggested in a newspaper interview that Turkey’s reluctance to unconditionally normalize relations with Armenia is only facilitating a broader international recognition of the killings as genocide.

    Sarkisian spoke to the Syrian daily “Al Watan” during an official visit that began on March 22.

    He was asked specifically to comment on a resolution recognizing the 1915 mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide that was adopted by a U.S. congressional committee on March 4.

    “One thing is obvious to me,” he replied. “The longer the process of normalizing our relations [with Turkey] lasts, the larger the number of states adopting such resolutions may become.”

    Turkish leaders link the ratification of the normalization protocols with a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that would satisfy Azerbaijan.

    They also say that the genocide resolutions adopted by the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee as well as Sweden’s parliament this month have further complicated Turkish-Armenian reconciliation.

    By contrast, Yerevan has welcomed both resolutions.

    In other remarks to “Al Watan,” Sarkisian said that Azerbaijani territory currently held by Armenian forces could be returned in exchange for security and self-determination for the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

    Sarkisian reiterated Yerevan’s long-standing policy of Armenian forces withdrawing from seven Azerbaijani districts around Nagorno-Karabakh in the event of an agreement on its final status.

    Speaking at a joint news conference with Sarkisian on March 22, Assad offered Syria’s help in establishing cordial relations between Armenia and Turkey for the sake of regional security and stability.

    https://www.rferl.org/a/Armenian_President_To_Visit_Syrian_Site_Of_1915_Tragedy/1992548.html
  • Turkey to lodge lawsuit against states, recognizing Armenian genocide

    Turkey to lodge lawsuit against states, recognizing Armenian genocide

    03/22/2010

    Turkish oppositional parties’ MPs from National Unity and Republican People’s Party intend to come up with a lawsuit against the states, that recognized Armenian Genocide of 1915 in Ottoman Empire, Turkish Hurriyet reads.

    The final decision on the matter should be made by Turkish government, that is yet silent.

    According to the Republican MP Sukru Elekdag, international court should give a precise response to Turkey about its fault. He reckons that both countries’ parliaments break assumption of innocence, accusing Turkey of the genocide: “I suppose that if we achieve the international out-of-court settlement, extensive work should be done to establish our case.”

    He deems the states, that already recognized the fact of genocide should realize the meaning of the word and determine whether one state can accuse the other of such a crime.

    S.T.

    News from Armenia – NEWS.am

  • Uncomfortable Truth ; Mr Erdogan’s unfortunate threats

    Uncomfortable Truth ; Mr Erdogan’s unfortunate threats

    Re: Uncomfotable Truth – 18/03/2010 as below.
    Dear Editor,
    Mr Erdogan’s unfortunate threats are truly regrettable especially as he does not represent the views of most Turkish People. His threats were quickly denied by his own Foreign Secretary Mr Davutoglu, indicating that this is not part of an Turkish Foreign Policy agenda. You are right in finding his intervention as demagogic and disreputable but he is still the same Prime Minister whose reputation and achievements have been held up as an example of a leader of a moderate Islamic government by most commentators in EU and US until very recently!
    Regarding the Armenian genocide claims, this is far from being an accepted fact and an ‘uncomfortable truth’ for Turkey. The claims have been strongly disputed by hundreds of archives (English, French and Russian) and many non Turkish and Turkish scholars. By the way the Armenian Government refuses to open its own archives. The real truth is that there were awful killings and deaths on both sides due to war, starvation and extreme cold and that in fact more Turks than Armenians had died tragically during this period. Unfortunately the powerful Armenian Diaspora continues to distort history and many people are blind to the obvious facts. Only last year Lord Avebury, along with Armenian activists were trying to lobby the Turkish Parliament by impressing on them the notorious and discredited ‘Blue Book’ and had to be stopped ( details are available).
    We hope that we are all interested in the real truth and that it must prevail.
    Yours faithfully,

    Betula Nelson
    Media Relations
    The Ataturk Society of the UK

    From The Times
    March 18, 2010

    Uncomfortable Truth

    Turkish threats to expel Armenian migrants to make a political point are shameful

    • 9 Comments
    Recommend? (16)

    Deportations have powerful symbolism in modern European history. The notion that the government of a would-be member state of the EU might propose the forced collective expulsion from its territory of a specified nationality ought to be unthinkable. Yet that course was casually threatened yesterday by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, against 100,000 Armenian migrants.

    Its purported justification was the recent passage of non-binding resolutions in the US Congress and the Swedish parliament. These motions describe as genocide the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during and after the First World War. Turkey takes strong issue with the claim of genocide. The history and politics of TurkishArmenian relations are convoluted, but the ethics of Mr Erdogan’s remarks are not. His intervention is demagogic and disreputable.

    The US and Swedish votes were carried by narrow margins and were opposed by their respective governments. The historical events that they recall began with the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915. The very word “genocide” is a post-1945 coinage, intended to define the peculiar barbarity of Nazism. Only gradually did the Armenian massacres come to be recognised as the first authentic case of genocide in the 20th century. But so they were. On conservative historical estimates, around a million Armenians were killed in a xenophobic purge that continued till 1923. It was a crime without precedent in modern history.

    Historical truth matters. It is extraordinary that the Government of modern Turkey should resist it. No one alive today was responsible for these barbarities. They were committed by an imperial power that has long since passed into history along with Wilhelmine Germany, to which it was allied in the First World War. While running for the presidency, Barack Obama declared his intention of being a leader who would speak the truth about the Armenian genocide. In practice, while his views are a matter of record, Mr Obama has been conciliatory in relations with Turkey.

    Mr Erdogan has little cause for complaint about the symbolic diplomacy of resolutions on historical events. He has no justification whatever for threats against Armenian migrants. Turkey is home to thousands of illegal immigrants from Armenia. Few would dispute that sovereign nations have the right to determine barriers to entry on the part of non-citizens, but these are migrants who have sought refuge from disaster. Forming an impoverished population that does necessary but low-wage work, they include many whose homes and livelihoods were destroyed in the Armenian earthquake of 1988. Mr Erdogan estimated yesterday that of 170,000 Armenians in Turkey, only 70,000 held Turkish citizenship. He threatened directly to tell the rest to leave.

    Turkey is a member state of Nato and a strategically important power within the Western alliance. It borders Iraq, in whose stability the Western democracies have an intense interest. But the Government in Ankara cannot exploit that status in order to advance its own diplomatic goals at the expense of liberal values. To object to a proper historical accounting of awesome crimes is a demeaning and destructive stance. But then to retaliate against the most vulnerable people within Turkey’s borders is unconscionable.

  • Advice to Prime Minister Erdogan:

    Advice to Prime Minister Erdogan:

    Continue Denying the Armenian Genocide

    Mr. Erdogan, please keep up the good work. Armenians need your kind assistance to pursue their cause until justice is done.

    By Harut Sassounian

    Publisher, The California Courier

    sassounian32

    It is a well-known fact that Turkish leaders are exceptional diplomats. However, as soon as they hear the words Armenian Genocide, Greece, Cyprus or Kurdistan, these diplomats lose their “cool” and resort to emotional outbursts and undiplomatic actions that harm their own interests.

    Realizing that this is the 95th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Turkish officials have been nervously preparing themselves for the upcoming tsunami of commemorations that would remind the international community of the crimes against humanity committed by Ottoman Turks.

    The first unexpected shot was fired on February 26 by the Parliament of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia, Spain, when it unanimously recognized the Armenian Genocide. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu immediately contacted his Spanish counterpart and Catalonian officials venting his anger and demanding an apology!

    Two days later, an expose of the Armenian Genocide was aired by CBS’s 60 Minutes, showing bones of Armenian victims still protruding from Syrian desert sands, almost a century later! The Turks were livid, accusing Armenians of unduly influencing the CBS network and questioning, as usual, the authenticity of the bones and the sand!

    Four days later, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee adopted a resolution acknowledging the Armenian Genocide. Turkey lost despite:

    n      Pressuring the Obama administration to oppose the resolution;

    n      Hiring multi-million dollar lobbying firms;

    n      Sending teams of Turkish parliamentarians to Washington;

    n      E-mail campaigns by Turkish and Azeri Americans; and

    n      Threatening to boycott U.S. defense contractors if they did not oppose the resolution.

    Immediately after losing that vote, Turkey recalled its Ambassador from Washington, indicating that he may be kept in Ankara until after April 24. State Minister Zafer Caglayan postponed his U.S. visit, intended to develop economic ties, “until the United States corrects its mistake.” A scheduled trip by the executive board of the Turkish Industrialists’ & Businessmen’s Association to Washington on March 16 and 17 was also canceled, and anti-American protests were held in Turkish cities. More importantly, Prime Minister Erdogan indicated that he might cancel his planned participation in the global summit on nuclear security to be held in Washington next month.

    Before Turkish passions had cooled down, Sweden’s Parliament dealt a second devastating blow to Ankara on March 11, by reaffirming the genocide of Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, by a vote of 131-130. Once again, Turkey recalled its Ambassador, and Prime Minister Erdogan canceled his upcoming trip to Stockholm which was to be accompanied by a large trade delegation. And, anti-Swedish demonstrations were held in several Turkish cities.

    These overly dramatic reactions prompted Turkish and foreign commentators to have a field day, speculating that if more countries recognize the Armenian Genocide, Turkey won’t have ambassadors left anywhere in the world, and Turkish officials won’t be visiting other countries, having to cancel their overseas trips. Furthermore, Turkey would be left without any imported goods and a weakened military, having canceled all purchases from the outside world. Turkey’s isolation is a just retribution for its denialist policy. By trying to punish others, Turkey is simply punishing itself.

    Vahe Magarian of Cincinnati, Ohio, sent a pointed letter to the New York Times last week, suggesting that Turkey’s recalled Ambassadors, “rather than flying home, should be made to march home on foot. Forced marches were the preferred means of travel during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire.”

    Prominent Turkish commentator Can Dundar wrote in Haber1 an article titled: “Are we going to recall all our Ambassadors?” He stated that, at this rate, by the time the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide rolls around in 2015, there won’t be a single country left not accusing Turkey of genocide. Isn’t it about time that we search out what dirty work our fathers did 95 years ago? Shouldn’t we ask what did we do wrong, Dundar implored.

    The main reason why Turkish officials panic every time the Armenian Genocide is acknowledged by yet another country is their fear of being asked to pay compensation for Armenian losses and return the occupied lands. Prime Minister Erdogan and his colleagues don’t seem to understand that Genocide recognition by itself does not lead to legal claims. How many inches of land have Armenians managed to liberate from Turkey as a result of such recognition by more than 20 countries? If Turkish leaders would only understand that parliamentary resolutions have no legal effect, maybe they would not get so excited over them!

    Nevertheless, there should be no doubt that Armenians still demand the return of their ancestral lands located in Eastern Turkey. Such claims have to be pursued in various courts, unless an unexpected cataclysmic event occurs first, causing the collapse or dismemberment of the Turkish State.

    In the meantime, we advise Mr. Erdogan to continue denying the Genocide at every opportunity, in order to encourage Armenians to persist in their efforts to expose Ankara’s lies. Were it not for Turkish officials’ vehement denials, there would not have been a worldwide outcry to reaffirm the facts of the Armenian Genocide by airing TV documentaries and adopting genocide resolutions.

    Mr. Erdogan, please keep up the good work. Armenians need your kind assistance to pursue their cause until justice is done.
  • ARMENIA AND GEORGIA IN THE CONTEXT OF TURKISH-ARMENIAN RAPPROCHEMENT

    ARMENIA AND GEORGIA IN THE CONTEXT OF TURKISH-ARMENIAN RAPPROCHEMENT

    By Vahagn Muradyan (03/17/2010 issue of the CACI Analyst)

    The Turkish-Armenian protocols signed last year in Zurich raised concerns that the perspective of Georgia’s decreased significance as a transit country for Armenia may boost nationalist demands around the Armenian minority in Georgia and cause new instability. While the protocols may not materialize in the foreseeable future, thus never inducing visible change in Yerevan’s policies, developments observed since the activation of Turkish-Armenian negotiations suggest that in case of full normalization Yerevan may attempt more assertive policies to uphold the cultural rights of Armenians in Georgia, without supporting their political demands and calls for autonomy.

    BACKGROUND: Armenian policies towards Georgia have been traditionally shaped by two factors: interest in safe transit for the Armenian and Armenia-bound goods through Georgia, and the situation with the Armenian minority in Georgia’s Samtskhe–Javakheti region with the accompanying issue of preserving the Armenian cultural heritage in Georgia. Closed borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan, leaving Georgia as the only route to Russian and European markets, have developed a strong sense among the Armenian leadership of dependence on Georgia. This reality made Yerevan tailor its policies to the transit needs and cooperate with Tbilisi to manage the grievances of the Armenian minority in Georgia.

    On the regional level, a lack of relations with Turkey has always been an important, although a non-active variable in Yerevan’s interactions with Tbilisi. Animosity between Georgia and Russia, Armenia’s strategic ally, on the other hand, has had a direct impact, which in recent years created at least two situations that tested Yerevan’s commitment to stability in Georgia.

    In 2005, the stated policy of non-interference in Georgia’s domestic affairs amid the crisis over the Russian military base in Akhalkalaki was an important occasion for President Robert Kocharyan, a hard-liner with a nationalist agenda, to demonstrate adherence to the already established line. The base was a source of employment for many and was also perceived as a security guarantee for the Armenian community populating a region bordering Turkey. The protests of Javakheti Armenians in March 2005 against the removal of the base triggered a visit of President Kocharyan to Georgia on April 1, 2005, at the invitation of Georgian President Saakashvili, and was widely perceived as a contribution on Armenia’s part to stabilize the situation.

    The August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, and Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent was yet another predicament. It put Armenia under pressure, prompting President Serzh Sargsyan to publicly pose the question of recognition of the two entities and elaborate a position that would both find understanding in Russia and reassure Georgia. In his annual speech to the diplomatic corps delivered on September 3, 2008, Sargsyan stated it was impossible to consider the recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, while Nagorno-Karabakh – an entity in a similar situation – remained unrecognized by Armenia.

    Cautious policies of the political leadership have always been in sharp contrast to public demands for adopting a harder line on problems in Javakheti, especially frequently voiced by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation – Dashnaktsutiun Party as well as many Yerevan-based Javakheti Armenians who have successfully organized themselves around this idea in Armenia’s political system.

    IMPLICATIONS: How would possible Turkish-Armenian reconciliation influence Armenia’s policies towards Georgia? The generally skeptical outlook for full and rapid normalization does not allow any definite conclusions. However, certain new features displayed after the activation of the process, as well as societal expectations in Armenia, imply that a potential opening of the border could make Yerevan more responsive to the cultural demands of Armenians in Georgia.

    President Sargsyan’s understanding of Turkey’s role has already marked a departure from his predecessor’s policies that sought to isolate Turkey from regional affairs.

    The first and so far most serious sign that reconciliation with Turkey may impact the usual format of Georgian-Armenian relations came on September 1, 2009, the day after the Turkish-Armenian protocols were made public. In an unprecedented statement, President Sargsyan mentioned the protection of Armenian monuments, registration of the Armenian Church in Georgia and recognition of Armenian as a regional language in Javakheti as cornerstones for strengthening Armenia’s friendship with Georgia. While the speech announced aspiration for a more assertive role in advocating the rights of Georgia’s Armenians, the exhaustive nature of the three principles – strictly confined to cultural demands – also implied a delimitation of the areas where Yerevan felt it could legitimately intervene and by default underscored Armenia’s attention to Tbilisi’s concerns about political objectives advanced by national minorities.

    The speech also signaled a significant shift from Kocharyan’s vision for the region, where Turkey was perceived as a security threat and maintaining unproblematic ties with Georgia outranked initiatives with Ankara. Consistent with this line, Kocharyan, while upholding non-interference in Georgia’s internal affairs, showed sympathy for the security concerns of Javakheti Armenians vis-à-vis Turkey. In contrast, cultural demands were given less prominence, and Armenians were urged to learn Georgian instead of seeking an official status for the language.

    On the societal level, the expectation that the rapprochement will bring about a harder line resonated well with the organizations advocating the cause of Javakheti Armenians. Shirak Torosyan, an MP from President Sargsyan’s Republican Party and chairman of “Javakhq [Javakheti] Compatriot Association” stated that after alternative routes are opened, Armenia will toughen its stance on problems in Javakheti.

    Divisions over the protocols in Armenian society were also replicated in discussions about Georgia, indicating opposition to sharp policy revisions. The Civilitas Foundation – established by Vartan Oskanyan, Foreign Minister in Kocharyan’s administration and an opponent of the protocols – cautioned in its 2009 report against “complacency” regarding Georgia, even after opening of the border. This understanding was adequately grasped in Tbilisi too. Georgian Prime Minister Nika Gilauri pointed out that the opening will not affect transit prices for Armenia while visiting Yerevan in January 2010.

    Concerns about “complacency”, however, may have been exaggerated. As the reopening on March 1 of the Upper Larsi checkpoint between Russia and Georgia showed, President Sargsyan, while seeking relations with Turkey and probing a new tone on Javakheti, continued to prioritize relations with Tbilisi and worked on restoring communications through Georgia. This became evident with Sargsyan’s February 27 trip to Georgia to discuss the reopening with Mikheil Saakashvili, and was confirmed by statements that since October 2009 Armenia played a key mediating role, alongside with the Swiss, to secure the opening. This effectively showed that even in the fall of 2009, when a rapid ratification of the protocols was widely expected, Armenia did not regard Turkey as an alternative to Georgia.

    This attitude seems to have been reciprocated by the Georgian side. Georgian officials announced that the checkpoint was opened at the request of Armenia, the main beneficiary of the overland link with Russia. However, against the backdrop of Turkish-Armenian talks, the opening also revealed Georgia’s interest in buttressing its position as a transit route for Armenia, besides demonstrating Tbilisi’s commitment to neighborly relations.

    CONCLUSIONS: A possible opening with Turkey would enhance Armenia’s regional role and offer a better bargaining position with Georgia. However, serious policy revisions that may endanger relations with Tbilisi are unlikely. The low level of trust between Armenia and Turkey will sustain Armenia’s sense of dependence on Tbilisi even in the event of an actual opening of the border. Avoiding adventurous policies towards Georgia has been the hallmark of all successive governments in Armenia, and any policy shifts introduced as a result of normalization with Turkey would likely be limited to more emphasis on cultural demands with continued consideration of Tbilisi’s concerns and expectations. A failure of the reconciliation process, on the other hand, will likely result in backtracking to Kocharyan’s vision of the region and discourage Yerevan to attempt a more active role in advocating the cultural rights of Javakheti Armenians.

    AUTHOR’S BIO: Vahagn Muradyan is a freelance researcher based in Yerevan.

    http://www.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/5287