Armenia:Turkey Protocol: IWPR Reports‏

IWPR Reports

4 September 2009

ARMENIAN BORDER DOUBTS
Armenian border villagers distrust moves to open up to Turkey.
By Davit Muradian in Bagaran

Armenians living along their country's border with Turkey are deeply distrustful of moves

by politicians to build ties with the neighbouring state, saying they fear a repeat of the

massacres of 1915.

The founders of the village Bagaran were refugees from an Armenian village of the same

name in what is now Turkey, who were driven from their homes by the campaign against

them during World War One. The Turkish government denies that the killings were

genocide, and the villagers see that as a sign that the Turks are still not to be trusted.

"I have the writings of my grandfather, who came from western Armenia," said Maria

Mkrtchian, a 55-year-old resident of Bagaran, referring to the region in what is now Turkey

where Armenians once lived.

"They lived through an unbearable nightmare. When they heard the soldiers were coming

to their village, they built a bridge in just three days and crossed over the river Akhuryan,

which had burst its banks. When I read about this, the thought of that nation makes me feel

terror and fear, and no matter how much the politicians talk about there being no danger,

I am still scared," said Mkrtchian, a teacher of Armenian language and literature in the local

school.

Bagaran sits on the banks of the Akhuryan river, which forms the border here.

The Turkish-Armenian border has been closed since 1993 when Turkey decided to support

its allies in Azerbaijan in their war with Armenia, when Armenians seized control of the region

of Nagorny-Karabakh. The villagers would like to see a relaxation of the current tough border

controls, which are here enforced by Russian border guards sent by under a Russian-

Armenian pact, but are suspicious of any move to open the border itself.

"The only thing that concerns me is economic aggression. They will fill the Armenian market

with the same goods, just at lower prices. We will be ruined, we will have to sell our property

and even our land. If there is no way of earning, that's what will happen," said Sanasar

Harutinian, the 52-year-old head of the village administration, in a viewpoint that is widely held

here.

"It would be better if they left things as they are. Some people say that opening the border will

benefit us; that trade will start developing. But all the same, there are Turkish goods in our

market anyway, so what is the sense in formally opening or closing the border?" asked

37-year-old science teacher Arshak Melqonian.

"Whatever happens, it is the peasants who guard the border, and who therefore receive the

first blow. The state should be more concerned about the population of the border villages."

But it is not a universal opinion. Davit Danielian, a 58-year-old accountant in the local

administration, said that opening the border would help develop the economy and keep

young people in the village. He said the border regime had relaxed since Soviet times, when

there was even a case of a woman in labour not being allowed to leave the village because

her papers were not in order, and it was time to move ahead in other ways too.

"Relations will be built with the neighbouring Turkish village, movement between us will start,

and mutually beneficial trade too," he said.

"The people have changed, times are not what they were. Maybe they were ignorant in 1915,

when all this happened, but what can happen now?"

Davit Muradian is a reporter from the Ar television company in Yerevan.


SURVIVORS WARY OF RAPPROCHEMENT
Armenians, recalling killings, oppose peace talks with Turkey.
By Gayane Mkrtchian

Movses Hameshian is one of the few Armenian who can still remember the mass killings of

1915 but he insists all his countrymen should heed its lessons and never trust the Turks.

"They are pressuring our president to go there for a peace deal with the Turks. Those who

did not see the carnage, the genocide, can speak out for opening the borders, but I do not

want this. It was us who were slaughtered and killed. Where now are those million and a half

Armenians? I was a witness to that sorrow and savagery, how they killed people, and threw

their bodies in the Euphrates," he told IWPR, his hands raised to the skies.

Turkey denies genocide took place, saying that deaths occurred on both sides during wartime,

but Armenians say they were systematically driven from their homes into the desert, where

between a million and a million and a half people were starved or killed.

Hameshian was born in the village of Kaboussieh in Turkey's Hatay province, where

Armenian partisans resisted Turkish forces until their ammunition ran out. The province was

ruled by France until 1939, when Turkey took control of it, and many of the surviving Armenians

fled a second time. Hameshian eventually ended up in Soviet Armenia.

The genocide question is still a factor in any peace deal with Turkey, and those like Hameshian

who survived it say they only lived because of a miracle. He said an Arab acquaintance of his

father rescued them by bribing the Turkish officers driving them into the desert.

"Those whose legs refused to go any further were just killed, hit in the head with a rifle butt. The

pregnant were killed too. No one else would act this way, but the Turks did. They are fascists.

They slaughtered defenceless, unarmed people," he said.

"I am an old man, and the experience of my life shows me that opening the border will bring no

good. Our country can develop without this."

His view was echoed by Mari Vandanian who, at 105, must be one of the oldest survivors of the

genocide left alive. Some 7,500 Armenians were killed in her home town of Malatya, where her

father used to work in the city council. Although she was saved by Turks' kindness, she also does

not want Armenia to sign a peace deal.

"They took my father away with the other men and killed them a few days before the start of the

genocide. My mother and grandmother and I lived only thanks to our Turkish friends, who hid us

in their house," she said.

She cried as she described how an orchard became a cemetery, and how refugees were killed

as they fled the town, where she and her mother herself stayed until 1937 "with fear in our hearts",

when she moved to Syria. She was also one of the hundreds of Armenians who came to Soviet

Armenia in 1946, following a propaganda campaign to lure them from the Middle East.

"Our president should not go there. They will force him to sign some document, under which we

will have to give up Artsakh (Nagorny-Karabakh), they will refrain from recognising the genocide

and only then will they open the border. Turks are from hell, you just don't know them very well. As

soon as the border is opened, Armenia will be full of Turks, it is better not to even open the road

to them," she said.

She did not believe that the opening of the border would end Armenia's troubles, even though it

might help the economy diversify away from its reliance on Georgia and Russia.

"At first it will be good, and what then? Do you know why they killed us? They said killing an

Armenian would get you to heaven. And how can I want the border to be opened after that?"

Gayane Mkrtchian is a reporter with Armenianow.com and a member of IWPR's EU-funded

Cross Caucasus Journalism Network.


THAW PRAISED IN ENCLAVE
Armenians in Karabakh welcome move on Turkey-Armenia ties.
By Karine Ohanian in Stepanakert

Politicians in Nagorny-Karabakh have given a cautious welcome to the thaw in Armenian-Turkish

relations, especially since the status of their own self-declared state was not included in the

published "protocols".

Ankara and Yerevan announced on the last day of August that, with two protocols, they had

agreed the terms under which diplomatic relations between them could be restored, and the

border opened, although the precise details of the agreement have not been released.

"We are closely following Armenian-Turkish relations, or more accurately, the true desire of

Armenia to create these relations," said Bako Sahakian, president of Nagorny-Karabakh.

Turkish politicians had previously linked a restoration of ties to a resolution of the status of

Nagorny-Karabakh, which has declared independence but is internationally considered a part

of Azerbaijan, a close ally of Turkey. Karabakh's Armenian inhabitants have governed

themselves independently since Baku's troops were driven out in the early 1990s, and Sahakian

said he was still concerned by Turkey's position.

"This cannot inspire much hope for the creation of honest and true relations," he said.

Other figures believed the thaw could mean Ankara had abandoned its insistence on

Karabakh being handed back to Baku's control.

"An important positive element of the protocol is the lack of a direct connection between

the normalisation of Armenian-Turkish relations and the regulation of the Nagorny-Karabakh

conflict, and the clear separation of these two conflicts," Masis Mailian, a former candidate

for the presidency and the current chairman of the Civic Council for Foreign Policy and

Security, told IWPR.

"Azerbaijan, as a result of the Armenian-Turkish process, will become more compliant in

the Karabakh talks process, which will allow a peace deal to be reached more quickly."

Karabakh's leaders will be closely watching the next six weeks, when the protocols will be

discussed in the two countries, then submitted to the parliaments for approval. The removal

of Karabakh from the discussions, as well as the lack of a mention of the Armenian genocide

question has made the documents more likely to be accepted. At least half a million

Armenians died when they were driven out of their homes in Ottoman Turkey in 1915 but

Turkey denies it was genocide.

"It is currently too early to say what this possible Armenia-Turkey agreement could give to

the Karabakh regulation process; it all depends on geopolitical developments. I welcome this

thaw, but stress that attempts to connect Armenian-Turkish relations with regulating Karabakh

-Azerbaijan are unacceptable. This cannot be done at the cost of Karabakh or the genocide,"

said David Babaian, head of the president's information service.

Karine Ohanian is a freelance journalist and a member of IWPR's EU-funded Cross Caucasus

Journalism Network. The terminology used in this report was chosen by the editors.
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