Tag: Turkish-Armenian dialogue

  • Did Atatürk distribute Ottoman Armenians’ property to his team?

    Did Atatürk distribute Ottoman Armenians’ property to his team?

    Turkey will once more mark the great Armenian tragedy of 1915 — last century’s archetypal ethnic cleansing, with systematic acts of genocide — in a mix of shame and shamelessness, confusion and clarity, ignorance and awareness, denial and admission.

    It has been 99 years since the disaster, which changed the human map of Anatolia forever and has remained an issue which needs to be confronted in the name of humanity and conscience, haunting the republic ever since.

    Not much has been happening on the official front this time, either. Winds of change, in terms of a rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia, are much weaker. Hopes raised by the process of protocols were buried when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to the surprise of even his foreign policy team, announced at the last minute in Baku that the normalization would not happen unless the Karabakh problem was resolved. This demolition of the process brought all efforts to an impasse.

    The political changes in Armenia and Turkey’s growing need for Azerbaijani energy resources do not help those who want to return to an optimistic mode. Needless to say, Russian President Vladimir Putin is rather happy with the status quo, which boosts Russia’s importance in the Caucasus.

    Meanwhile, civil society keeps busy. Taboos in the public arena are now gone; those who want to call the events “genocide” are free to do so. Article 301 is no longer applied, and if any prosecution is launched, it dies before it reaches the courts. Debate in the media continues, as does the academic research.

    Books pour out, often debating with each other, and bringing new data to light. One of the best in its genre, and of great interest to the reading public, is a detailed account of what happened in İstanbul on April 24, 1915 — when more than 230 Ottoman Armenian intellectuals were arrested in a sweep and sent to death camps in Anatolia — and afterwards. It is written by Nesim Ovadya İzrail, titled “24 Nisan 1915 / İstanbul, Çankırı, Ayaş, Ankara” (April 24, 1915 / İstanbul, Çankırı, Ayaş, Ankara) — a work that needs to be translated into other languages.

    Another book, titled “İttihadçının Sandığı” (The Unionist’s Chest), is brand new and based on a large number of letters and documents linked to the high-ranking perpetrators of the genocide, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Its author, Murat Bardakçı, is known to be a fierce denialist, yet continues to publish books which are of deep historic value, such as the secret diaries of Talat Pasha, the architect of the mass deportations.

    The new book, Bardakçı says, aims to refute claims that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the republic, did not support the Unionists’ acts and later condemned them. Indeed, there are documents and numbers that seem to indicate that Atatürk distributed Armenian properties to his republican team and paid their salaries from Armenian assets. Strong stuff.

    Meanwhile, there are activities launched on various levels as the hundredth anniversary approaches. One of them is by the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association (TÜSİAD), which aims to bring together experts and historians from Turkey and the Armenian diaspora, as well as international academia, to seek a common ground and language.

    The Turkish state keeps busy too, in order to confront the expected wave of criticism from the international community; Turkey, to many people, appears reluctant to face a truth from the remote past. The Foreign Ministry, under the instructions of Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, is intent on burying the great Armenian tragedy somewhere in the context of World War I, talking endlessly about “fair memory.” But this approach does not seem very promising, when it comes to equating civilians’ and soldiers’ deaths.

    On the political level, Prime Minister Erdoğan, having returned to his nationalist self, is categorically against any recognition or regret, let alone an apology. He recently accused some NGOs of being “paid by Armenian lobbies.” Some ministers from the Justice and Development Party (AKP) are now parroting the prime minister, saying that it was Armenians who killed Turks.

    But most meaningful is what some people will do tomorrow. The mass human suffering in 1915 will be commemorated in many events in İstanbul and 10 other cities across Anatolia. This is what matters most

    Yavuz Baydar
    Today’s Zaman

  • Using Cheese to Bridge the Turkey-Armenia Gap

    Using Cheese to Bridge the Turkey-Armenia Gap

    By SUSANNE GÜSTEN

    ISTANBUL — Artush Mkrtchyan calls it cheese diplomacy. Others speak of informal, or “track-two,” diplomacy. By either name, it is all about building bridges between Turks and Armenians in the absence of formal, or “track-one,” diplomatic relations between their governments.

    Mr. Mkrtchyan, 55, an engineer, art critic and activist from the Armenian town of Gyumri has made cheese the medium of contact and cooperation with the neighboring town of Kars, in Turkey.

    Less than 70 kilometers, or 45 miles, apart but separated by a border that has been closed for nearly two decades, cheese makers in Gyumri and Kars, along with colleagues in the nearby Georgian town of Ninotsminda, produce and market a “Caucasian cheese,” invented by Mr. Mkrtchyan in 2008 to foster cross-border cooperation.

    “My cheese diplomacy actually preceded the soccer diplomacy between our countries,” Mr. Mkrtchyan said Monday as he walked into a meeting in Istanbul organized by Support to Armenian-Turkish Rapprochement, an umbrella group for like-minded activists from Turkey and Armenia.

    He was referring to a brief rapprochement, kicked off by a visit by President Abdullah Gul of Turkey to Yerevan, Armenia, for a soccer World Cup qualifying match between the two countries’ teams in September 2008, followed by the visit of President Serzh Sargsyan of Armenia for the return match in Bursa, Turkey, in October 2009.

    The visits seemed at the time to herald a breakthrough in relations between the two countries, which are weighed down by bitter disagreement over whether or not the 1915 massacres of Armenians in Anatolia amounted to genocide — and by the territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, in which Turkey has sided with Azerbaijan.

    Although Turkey was among the first countries to recognize Armenia in 1991, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the border between the two countries has been closed since 1993, when Turkey suspended relations to protest Armenian advances on Azeri territory.

    In the year framed by the two soccer matches, Armenia and Turkey — with the support of international mediators — negotiated and signed two protocols to re-establish diplomatic relations, open their border and foster economic, cultural and consular cooperation.

    But faced with opposition from nationalists in both countries and pressure from Azerbaijan on Ankara, relations froze again within months. The protocols have never been submitted for parliamentary ratification in either country.

    With presidential elections due in Armenia next year and in Turkey a year later, a new thaw is unlikely soon, Hasan Selim Ozertem, an Eurasian affairs expert at the International Strategic Research Organization, a private analytical institute in Ankara, said in an interview. “It is a vote-losing issue in both countries,” Mr. Ozertem said.

    On top of that, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, bowing to veiled threats from Azerbaijan of gas-price increases and exclusion from pipeline projects, has vowed not to move forward with the protocols until the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is resolved.

    Still, the protocol process has not been a complete failure, Gevorg Ter-Gabrielyan, director of the nongovernmental Eurasia Partnership Foundation in Armenia, said in Istanbul this week. “Look at all the bonds that have been created here,” Mr. Ter-Gabrielyan said, indicating the crowd of businessmen, artists, social workers, journalists and academics from both countries exchanging hugs and greetings in Armenian, Turkish and English as they arrived for the meeting.

    “These bonds collectively form a capacity of conflict prevention that did not exist five years ago,” Mr. Ter-Gabrielyan said. “This is a result of the boost by the protocol process.”

    The activists, many of them bleary-eyed from the night flight from Yerevan that is the only link between the two countries, were gathered in Istanbul to review two years of track-two contacts, supported by a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development, and to plot the way forward in the face of unfavorable political conditions and the imminent end of the grant.

    Participants listened as an Armenian activist described the impression a visiting Turkish youth group had made on schoolchildren in an Armenian village. “The kids could not believe they were going to see a real Turk, it seemed so distant to them, so historical,” the activist, Gayane Mkrtchyan, said. Afterward, the children had remarked that the visitors “looked just like us,” she said.

    Youth-group exchanges and media visits were among the activities sponsored by the Armenian-Turkish umbrella group, backed by the two-year Usaid grant that ends this month. Other activities included business conferences, a joint association of travel companies to foster regional tourism, academic workshops and cooperation on policy research, coproductions of films and other cultural projects.

    “This kind of track-two diplomacy is really important,” Mr. Ozertem, the Eurasia expert, said by phone from Ankara. “When relations are bad between two countries, the damage deepens if there is no contact between societies.”

    “This is damage control, and we need it,” he added.

    With the Usaid funding running out this month, some projects have been successful enough to go forward on their own: The Armenia Turkey Cinema Platform, for one, hopes to show coproduced films at the Tribeca and Sundance festivals in the United States.

    Yet frustration was tangible at the Istanbul meeting.

    “I have been working for an open border since 1997, and I am tired of hitting my head against the wall,” said Arsen Ghazaryan, president of the Union of Manufacturers and Businessmen of Armenia. Still, he said, he would not stop trying. “It is the responsibility of our generation.”

    Yurdum Hasgul Cagatay, a Turkish entrepreneur who recently led a group of Kurdish businessmen from the southeastern Turkish town of Diyarbakir to Yerevan to sign a cooperation agreement between the two towns’ Chambers of Commerce, was more upbeat on the same theme. “Open the border, we want to make money,” Ms. Cagatay said.

    Much of the brainstorming in Istanbul centered on ways to draw the Armenian diaspora, widely seen as hard-line, into the process. Another focus was on how to keep up contacts, and momentum, after the end of the $2.4 million project. “In both countries we are few, we need to stay together,” said Mr. Ghazaryan, the Armenian business leader.

    Mr. Ter-Gabrielyan, director of the Eurasia Partnership Foundation, said it would take several weeks to sift the proposals generated by the meeting and decide how to move forward.

    In Gyumri, meanwhile, Mr. Mkrtchyan, the father of cheese diplomacy, has already moved on — to wine. Under the label “Caucasian Bouquet,” he has persuaded producers to start marketing their wines together — not only Turkish, Armenian and Georgian, but also wineries in Azerbaijan and Karabakh.

    A version of this article appeared in print on October 25, 2012, in The International Herald Tribune
  • Armenia and Turkey not to reconcile this year

    Armenia and Turkey not to reconcile this year

    88060MOSCOW. – The process of reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey will not move forward this year, political scientist at the Eastern Studies Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Skakov told Armenian News-NEWS.am correspondent adding that the suspension is conditioned by several factors.

    “First, it is domestic political situation in Turkey. Serious steps by Ankara are suspended by the pre-election struggle. Second, Azerbaijan blackmails Turkey openly threatening to raise prices for the energetic resources and to refuse transportation, which is beneficial for Turkey. When Azerbaijani actions will no longer work, new steps are possible in normalization of the Armenian-Turkish relations,” Skakov said.

    via Armenia and Turkey not to reconcile this year – Russian expert | Armenia News – NEWS.am.

  • Expert: no document can guarantee stability of Armenian-Turkish relations

    Expert: no document can guarantee stability of Armenian-Turkish relations

    3765YEREVAN, June 28. /ARKA/. No document can guarantee stability of Armenian-Turkish relations, considers specialist in Turkic philology Artak Shakaryan.

    “Today Turkey does not attack Armenia and it is not a good will of Ankara. It is the result of relatively calm inter-political situation in Armenia and presence of Russian military bases in the country”, he said in the press-conference on Tuesday.

    As an example he mentioned the current tense relations of Turkey and Syria. “Strained relations between Turkey and Syria proves that no document can stop Turkey if Ankara considers expansion of its borders or influence possible. But once Turkey and Syria had close interrelations”, said Shakaryan.

    Today, the issue of Armenian-Turkish protocols is not a priority issue in Turkey and if there is no pressure from USA, Ankara will return to these protocols as late as possible – maybe in 2014 on the threshold of 100 years of the Genocide of Armenian in Ottoman Empire.

    There are no diplomatic relations between Armenia and Turkey. The border between two countries was closed since 1993 by the official initiative of Ankara. Complicated relations between both countries are due to a number of circumstances, particularly by the support of Ankara to Azerbaijani position in Karabakh conflict and acute reaction of Turkey on the process of international recognition of Armenian Genocide in 1915 in Ottoman Empire.

    Process of normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations started by the initiative of the President of Armenian Serzh Sargsyan in autumn 2008. Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Armenia and Turkey Edward Nalbandyan and Ahmed Davutoghlu signed “Protocol on establishment of diplomatic relations” and “Protocol on the development of mutual relations” on October 10, 2009. These documents should be ratified by the parliaments of both countries. However, on April 22, 2010 Sargsyan signed a decree on the termination of ratification process of protocols announcing that Turkey is not ready to continue the started process. Ratification process of protocols by the Turkish Parliament is in a frozen state.-0-

    via Expert: no document can guarantee stability of Armenian-Turkish relations | 29/06/2011 11:04 | News agency ARKA – Armenian news.

  • Turkish, Armenian NGOs push peace process through ‘TANGO diplomacy’

    Turkish, Armenian NGOs push peace process through ‘TANGO diplomacy’

    Civil-society organizations from Turkey and Armenia will gather in Istanbul in October.

    With political efforts to bring about reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia seemingly stymied, nongovernmental organizations are working on diplomatic moves of their own, planning a network to help Turkish and Armenian groups develop joint projects.

    Preparing an Armenian-Turkish dictionary, tallying the economic cost of the closed border between the two countries and encouraging the export of Turkish products across the Atlantic via Armenian businesspeople in the United States were among the ideas for cooperation discussed Saturday in Yerevan by representatives of the Istanbul-based Association for Corporate Responsibility, or TKSSD, and 20 Armenian NGOs.

    “It’s not always easy for governments to develop relations. However, short-term results can be achieved with the cooperation of NGOs, which can contribute to the efforts of the governments,” TKSSD Chairman Serdar Dinler told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on Wednesday.

    To that end, Dinler’s organization and the Armenian Marketing Association have launched the “TANGO Network Project” – “T” for Turkey and “A” for Armenia, plus “NGO” – in order to bring groups from both countries together.

    Civil-society organizations from Turkey and Armenia will gather in Istanbul in October to make contacts, brainstorm new project ideas and discuss future joint opportunities to bring the countries’ peoples closer together in the absence of diplomatic ties.

    “Such activities by civil-society organizations are essential in building the public support and social approval necessary for the success of the attempts [by the governments],” Dinler said. “In addition to the public and private sectors, the social sector combines sensitivity to the major, unmet needs of society with direct and indirect financial sources coming from the economies of the other two.”

    The German Marshall Fund’s Black Sea Trust has already begun supporting the project; representatives from the fund, as well as from the US Embassy in Turkey and the European Union, are expected to participate in the October gathering as potential donors.

    The TANGO Network’s activities – which will include creating a website to foster cross-border communication between NGOs and highlight best practices from current and past projects in both countries – will help enable the Turkish and Armenian governments to better understand the situation of the two societies, Aram Navasardyan, the chairman of the Armenian Marketing Association, told the Daily News on Wednesday.

    He added that the NGOs’ experiences will help the governments build their reconciliation efforts in a more proper way.

    Hurriyet Daily News