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  • Turkey And Armenia

    TURKEY AND ARMENIA

    Arab News
    http://arabnews.com/opinion/editorial/article 46571.ece
    April 23 2010
    Saudi Arabia

    The breakdown in the normalization of relations between Turkey and
    Armenia is not simply, as some Armenians are claiming, because of
    Turkish unwillingness to accept the extent of the 1915 killings of
    Armenian Turks or recognize them as genocide.

    The administration of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears to
    have underestimated the wider effects of a wider rapprochement with
    the Armenians. The Azeri government, which is in dispute with Armenia
    over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, was incensed at the protocols
    to build links between Ankara and Yerevan. As a result Erdogan flew
    to Baku to assure the Azeris that the deal with the Armenians would
    not be put forward for ratification by the Turkish Parliament, until
    some progress was being made on the resolution of the issue of the
    enclave, currently occupied by Armenian forces. Erdogan's statement
    in turn angered the Armenians, who pointed out that in the protocols
    they inked with the Turks, there was no reference whatsoever to
    Nagorno-Karabakh. Aware that the deal was turning sour, in advance
    of the appearance of both countries at US President Barack Obama's
    recent Nuclear Security Summit, Erdogan sent his foreign minister to
    Yerevan to see if he could fix up a meeting in the US with Armenian
    President Serge Sarkisian. That meeting did not happen. Instead,
    Yerevan Friday stopped the ratification process blaming Turkey's
    "inconsistent and evasive position and policy of preconditions". The
    Armenians also opened a new front in their drive to have the Turks
    accept their contention that the 1915 massacres in eastern Turkey
    saw 1.5 million perish and amounted to genocide. They have invited
    Turkish historians to visit their national archive containing some
    7,000 documents relating to these events.

    Although the 1915 slayings still loom large in the minds of Armenians,
    they are past business. Nagorno-Karabakh is present business. It seems
    extraordinary that Erdogan could have made the mistake of not alluding
    to the Azeris' concerns during original talks with the Armenians. Then
    he compounded the error by assuring the Azeris that the protocols
    would not be ratified before progress was made over Nagorno-Karabakh.

    The Turkish diplomatic service remains one of the country's most
    efficient elites and would surely have warned Erdogan on both courses
    of action.

    Nationalists in both countries will be pleased that the reconciliation
    process has been stymied, for the moment at least. Yet both Erdogan
    and Sarkisian must surely realize the drivers which caused them each
    to sign the protocols in Zurich in 2009 have not changed. For both
    countries, the economic and strategic benefits of friendly relations
    are considerable. For Ankara they represent the foundation on which
    can be built wider connections with the rest of the Caucasus.

    Azerbaijan could also benefit from good ties between Turkey and
    Armenia, because Turkey could offer its good offices to help find
    a settlement on the enclave. As things now stand again, no one is
    the winner -- everyone, including the Azeris is losing out. The ball
    seems to be in Erdogan's court. Maybe sending Turkish historians to
    examine the Armenian 1915 archive might be a good return shot.
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