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Armenia: President Sargsyan Blamed For Obama Avoiding The G-Word

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  • Armenia: President Sargsyan Blamed For Obama Avoiding The G-Word

    ARMENIA: PRESIDENT SARGSYAN BLAMED FOR OBAMA AVOIDING THE G-WORD
    Marianna Grigoryan

    EurasiaNet
    http://www.eurasianet.org/de partments/insight/articles/eav042610.shtml
    April 26 2010
    NY

    Many Armenians are blaming President Serzh Sargsyan's decision to
    freeze the reconciliation process with Turkey for US President Barack
    Obama's failure again this year to call Ottoman Turkey's World War
    I-era slaughter of ethnic Armenians an act of genocide.

    Obama's statement on April 24, the 95th anniversary of the 1915
    slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million ethnic Armenians, differed little
    from his comments in 2009. Treading gingerly, Obama declared that
    "[t]he Meds Yeghern [Great Catastrophe] is a devastating chapter in
    the history of the Armenian people, and we must keep its memory alive
    in honor of those who were murdered and so that we do not repeat the
    grave mistakes of the past."

    For many Armenians, Obama's comments fell short of expectations. An
    Obama pledge to recognize the massacre as genocide, made back when he
    was a presidential candidate, is still widely remembered by Armenians.

    Ruben Safrastian, a prominent expert in Turkish studies and the
    director of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences' Institute of
    Oriental Studies, was one of those who had hoped for much more from
    Obama's statement.

    "Obama's avoidance of the word 'genocide' is the result of bargaining
    and an agreement with Turkey," Safrastian claimed.

    Safrastian was unable to back his assertion with hard evidence. But
    he and others base an assumption that Washington is leaning toward
    Turkey on the fact that the White House did quietly urge a US House of
    Representatives committee to drop a vote on a genocide-recognition
    resolution, which was adopted in early March. US Secretary of
    State Hillary Rodham Clinton termed the vote ill-suited for the
    Armenian-Turkish rapprochement process - a comment often interpreted
    in Yerevan as meaning that it was ill-suited for Turkey, a long-time
    US military ally. [For background see EurasiaNet's archive].

    One prominent opposition politician contends that Obama's omission
    of the word "genocide" is the fault of President Serzh Sargsyan's
    government, which, on April 22, suspended parliamentary ratification
    of the protocols on reconciliation with Turkey. [For background see
    EurasiaNet's archive].

    "In fact, Yerevan caused this situation by its own moves,"
    argued Stepan Safarian, leader of the opposition Heritage Party's
    parliamentary faction. "Serzh Sargsyan made a step that settled minor
    problems, but damaged the process of international recognition of the
    genocide." In response to the international community, the Armenian
    government refrained from pressing Turkey on the genocide question
    to give reconciliation a chance, Safarian said.

    In a televised speech, Sargsyan stated that Armenia would move forward
    with the normalization of relations "when we are convinced that there
    is a proper environment in Turkey, and there is leadership in Ankara
    ready to reengage in the normalization process."

    Another Armenian analyst disputed the notion that Sargsyan's
    announcement significantly influenced Obama's comments. The reality
    of the Armenian-Turkish reconciliation process was that it had hit
    an impasse at the outset of this year, and this snag had become
    entangled with the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process, involving Yerevan
    and Turkey's strategic ally, Azerbaijan, asserted Manvel Sargsian,
    a senior analyst at the Armenian Center for National and International
    Studies. [For background see EurasiaNet's archive].

    "Negotiations with Turkey had come to a pretty difficult situation, and
    the decision [i.e. suspending the reconciliation process] would've been
    both logical [to the international community], as well as unexpected
    for Turkey and Azerbaijan," Sargsian said. Sargsian added that Turkey
    and Azerbaijan seemed to believe that Armenia is more eager to see
    the Armenian-Turkish border reopened than, in fact, it is.

    Reactions to President Sargsyan's announcement from the three countries
    mediating the Karabakh talks - the United States, Russia and France -
    were relatively measured.

    US Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip
    Gordon commented on April 23 that US diplomats "continue to urge both
    sides to keep the door open to pursuing efforts at reconciliation
    and normalization." French President Nicolas Sarkozy made a similarly
    neutral statement; Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has not officially
    commented on the decision, but met with Sargsyan two days before the
    ratification freeze was declared.

    In the opinion of one of Armenia's largest opposition blocs, Sargsyan's
    expression of willingness to continue with reconciliation only
    underlines that the peacemaking with Turkey is over. "By suspending
    the ratification process, on the one hand, and voicing readiness to
    continue it, on the other hand, the regime, in fact, confesses it
    has come to a dead-end," declared ex-President Levon Ter-Petrosian's
    Armenian National Congress.

    By contrast, the nationalist Armenian Revolutionary
    Federation-Dashnaktsutiun, which left Sargsyan's governing coalition in
    2009 in protest at the Turkish reconciliation policy, believes Sargsyan
    should have gone a step further and removed Armenia's signature from
    the protocols. A law enacted earlier in 2010 enables the Armenian
    government to revoke previously signed international treaties. [For
    background see EurasiaNet's archive].

    Many Armenians interviewed during April 24 commemoration in Yerevan
    expressed pessimism about the chances for reconciliation with Turkey.

    Thirty-five-year-old programmer Hambarzum Mkrtchian offered one
    of the few voices of dissent. Sargsyan's speech about halting
    ratification of the protocols was "quite difficult" to make in the
    face of international and domestic reactions, said Mkrtchian. "I am
    sure the process will go in the right direction. I trust him."

    Some older Armenians expressed respect for Sargsyan's attempt to
    reconcile with Turkey, but showed little surprise that the process
    had stalled over what they perceived as Ankara's demand that Armenia
    make concessions in the Karabakh peace process. "What could we expect
    from Turkey other than preconditions?" asked retired 70-year-old
    schoolteacher Angela Khalafian, whose parents left Turkey amidst the
    Ottoman Turkish government's crackdown on ethnic Armenians. "Doesn't
    our past teach us that we can't walk in tandem with Turkey's policies?

    How could the Armenian authorities be so naive?"

    Editor's Note: Marianna Grigoryan is a freelance reporter based
    in Yerevan.
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