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  • No You Can't

    NO YOU CAN'T
    By Raffi K. Hovannisian

    Lragir.am
    22/03/10

    OBAMA'S TEST AND TURKEY'S TIME

    Yerevan-A couple of sentences in a non-binding resolution, passed
    by the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee on March
    4, softly reaffirming the genocide of the Armenian people and the
    forcible dispossession of their homeland has got Turkey threatening
    the world, the US administration complicitly trying to hush Congress
    by blocking a vote on the floor, and many Armenians celebrating a rare
    moment against the odds. The Swedish parliament's March 11 decision
    to recognize and then its prime minister's extraterrestrial apology
    to Turkey have only raised the stakes.

    But there is nothing to celebrate.

    The Armenian people lost more than a million souls and their ancient
    patrimony in what US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau,
    a full generation before Raphael Lemkin coined "genocide," described
    in 1915 as "race extermination." The US National Archives-together
    with those of Great Britain, Canada, France, Italy, and even Germany,
    a close Turkish ally at the time-comprise thousands of eyewitness,
    diplomatic, consular, and military documents which attest to this
    first genocide of modern times.

    On the balance of commemorative bills and declarations, therefore,
    lies the integrity of Western civilization-not the perennial Armenian
    quest for recognition and redemption or even Ankara's long-standing
    policy of shameful denial.

    If President Obama and Secretary Clinton want to renege on their
    previous commitments and so continue their predecessors' realpolitik
    in effective mockery of the exemplary American record, it's their
    prerogative. This resolution and the annual April 24 statement offered
    by the president are opportunities for THEM to set AMERICAN history
    straight and to pay due tribute to the US and European ambassadors,
    consuls, relief officials, servicemen, and missionaries who bore
    witness and worked relentlessly but ultimately helplessly to prevent
    the Armenian genocide.

    Other than that, such initiatives and the standard Turkish response of
    blackmail and double jeopardy serve only to trivialize the unrequited
    crime against humanity which opened the twentieth century. As a
    grandson of four survivors, I lose nothing more if Mr. Obama trumps
    his own history and his own conscience by not calling Genocide by
    its name. It is he who must decide whether "yes we can" was, like
    the White House, an end unto itself.

    For Washington, Ankara, and other capitals in alliance, it is high
    time to uncover a few fundamental truths, whether they are self-evident
    or not.

    1. By the vice of genocide the Armenians were fully and finally
    uprooted from their heartlands, which remain to this day under
    Turkish dominion. Despite the beginnings of a civil-society movement
    in Turkey to face history and seek reconciliation through truth,
    the leadership of state continues to reap the fruits of genocide by
    denying it, criminalizing the very use of that term, laying strategic
    pipelines across its killing fields, and asserting its existing de
    facto borders with Armenia despite the de jure frontier that was
    demarcated by T. Woodrow Wilson's arbitral award and issued under
    presidential seal in November 1920.

    2. Accordingly, Turkey has no standing to impose its preconditions
    of choice-removal of genocide recognition from the international
    agenda, ratification of the existing boundary as negotiated by the
    Bolsheviks and Kemalists behind Armenia's back in 1921, and the
    gifting of Mountainous Karabagh to Azerbaijan-upon the establishment
    of diplomatic relations with the modern-day Republic of Armenia. If
    Ankara wants in good faith to turn a new page with Yerevan, then it
    should do so by immediately lifting its unilateral blockade of Armenia,
    exchanging notes and then ambassadors, and building confidence to
    resolve the array of outstanding issues between them.

    This cannot and will not happen through the signature and ratification
    of condition-laden protocols with an Armenian administration that
    lacks public mandate and basic democratic credentials.

    3. Either the two neighboring nations move forward without the positing
    of any preconditions whatsoever or, if the Turks really insist on
    them, the Armenians must retrieve the symmetry of process and put
    all of their positions on the table as well. These might include
    remedies, available under customary or conventional international law,
    of genocide acknowledgment, atonement, remembrance, and education;
    a comprehensive inventory and restoration of the Armenian cultural
    heritage; a guaranteed right of return for the progeny of genocide
    victims and survivors; a full restitution of properties to the original
    owners or their rightful heirs; a final territorial adjudication and
    provision of sovereign access to the sea.

    If the parties prefer and possess the requisite self-confidence, they
    can entrust the whole package to the International Court of Justice.

    4. Turkey has no ethical basis or maneuver room to pontificate about
    "occupation" except in the context of its own dispossession of the
    Armenians, Kurds, Assyrians, Yezidis, Alewis, Greeks, and Cypriots.

    As for the Republic of Mountainous Karabagh, whose constitutional
    foundations are even firmer than Kosovo's or Abkhazia's, it achieved
    its post-Stalinist decolonization by referendum held in compliance
    with both international and controlling Soviet law and then was
    forced to defend it against Azerbaijan's Turkish-supported but
    nonetheless failed war of aggression. If ever the rule of law
    really exists, Mountainous Karabagh has earned its independence
    and the right to be recognized-through legitimate liberation, not
    Ottoman-style occupation. It appears today that the specter of military
    conflagration, threatened daily from Baku and between the lines from
    Ankara, could overcome the fragile cease-fire in place since 1994.

    5. In all events, Germany and its postwar example of cleansing remorse,
    reparation and then leadership constitute the appropriate point of
    departure. The Genocide and world inaction to punish its perpetrators
    begot the Holocaust. Coming full circle, Turkey and its contemporary
    generation ought to consider taking the German high road before it's
    too late.

    As we approach April 24 and the great American proclamation on its
    95th passing, these simple points might better inform policy and give
    a more meaningful ring to the words we use, the passages we recite,
    and the values we hold hallow.

    Raffi K. Hovannisian, Armenia's first foreign minister, currently
    represents the Heritage Party in parliament.
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