ARMENIANS ANGRY OVER TURKEY ACCORDS
By Tanya Goudsouzian
09/10/09
Diaspora Armenians have held annual commemorations of what they claim
is a genocide perpetrated by Turkey in 1915 and say the draft protocols
could whitewash Ankara's role [AFP]
When the Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers meet in Switzerland
on October 10 to sign an agreement to normalise relations, they will
put a century of conflict and controversy behind them.
The draft protocols of agreement, first made public on August 31,
seek to establish diplomatic relations and the possible reopening of
the long-closed Turkish-Armenian border.
However, the draft protocols have sparked heated debate among
nationalists on both sides and provoked outraged condemnation from
many diaspora Armenians.
There have been protests in the Armenian capital Yerevan and
demonstrations across Argentina, Canada, France, Lebanon, Russia and
the US.
"Armenia is not for sale," they say, with some going as far as branding
Serzh Sarkisian, the Armenian president, a traitor.
Armenian genocide claims
In 2008, Abdullah Gul, left, met with Sarkisian in Yerevan to launch
the draft protocols [EPA] The move to sign the protocols comes one
year after an historic visit to Armenia by Abdullah Gul, the Turkish
president and follow, reportedly, months of secret talks brokered by
Swiss mediators.
Earlier this month, Sarkisian began a world tour of diaspora Armenian
communities in an effort to alleviate their concerns and explain his
government's position.
However, it is doubtful he will succeed as many Armenians believe
the protocols relinquish too many of their rights for far too little
in return.
Pitched as a means to boost landlocked Armenia's stagnant economy,
the protocols are being rushed through the legislature in the capital
Yerevan.
Critics believe the protocols have been hastily drawn up and largely
favour Turkey.
If the protocols are ratified, they say, Armenia would essentially
forfeit its right to demand that Turkey recognise, and be held
accountable for, what they describe as the genocide in which more
than 1.5 million Armenians perished.
Ankara has always rejected such charges and says many died on both
sides during the first world war.
While noted experts around the world have already established the
veracity of Armenian genocide claims, the protocols call for the
establishment of an independent fact-finding commission to "determine
the truth".
"These protocols, by establishing a historical commission, fuel
Turkey's denial of the Armenian genocide, a policy that represents
a grave offence to the Armenian nation and a direct security threat
to the Republic of Armenia," says Aram Hamparian, executive director
of the Armenian National Committee of America.
"In requiring that the borders be recognis ed first, as a precondition
for even the establishment of relations, the Turkish side clearly
seeks to pressure the Armenian government into forfeiting the rights
of all Armenians to a just resolution of this crime."
Nagorno-Karabakh
In 1988, Armenia and Azerbaijan clashed over the disputed enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh after ethnic Armenians declared their independence
from Azerbaijani rule.
Armenian forces seized control of the disputed territory and seven
surrounding regions from Azerbaijan in the early 1990s and declared
an independent state - the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.
Turkey sided with Azerbaijan, a country it feels is a traditional
and ethnic ally, imposed an embargo on Yerevan, and closed the
border thereby preventing land-locked Armenia from easy access to
European trade.
Despite repeated diplomatic efforts since a tenuous ceasefire took
hold in 1993, Armenia and Azerbaijan have failed to negotiate a
settlement on the region's status.
However, since the protocol agreements were first drafted, Turkey
has promised that it will re-open borders with Armenia, leaving
Azerbaijan fearful of losing any leverage it may have had in final
settlement talks.
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, meanwhile, fears losing its only real
support for independence in Yerevan in favour of the protocols
with Turkey.
US influence
Armenia was the only country to recognise the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic
Joseph Kechichian, editor of the Journal of the Society for Armenian
Studies, told Al Jazeera: "The Turks are in a bind vis-a-vis Azerbaijan
because if, and when, they open the border, Azerbaijan will fall back
into even more irrelevance."
"Watch for added Azeri pressure on Turkey in the weeks and months
to come.
What kind of economic sweeteners will be dangled by Moscow and
Ankara in front of Yerevan and Baku will probably determine whether
contemplated accords will work," he said.
Kechichian also believes that ratification of the protocols will
strengthen US influence in the region, if indirectly, through its
traditional ally and fellow Nato member Turkey.
Some experts believe that since the visit of Barack Obama, the US
president, to Turkey in April, there has been growing momentum in the
Middle East and South Caucasus to position Ankara as a counterweight
to Iranian and Russian influence in the region.
"Sadly, it would seem that the US, in pressuring Armenia to accept
the one-sided terms of these protocols, is effectively acting as
Turkey's surrogate in the region," says Hamparian.
Armenian interests sidelined?
Vartan Oskanian, a former Armenian foreign minister, has also voiced
reservations. While supporting the establishment of normal relations
with Turkey, he maintains he "would have never signed this document".
According to Oskanian, the protocols - prepared with the participation
of the US and other influential countries - do not ser ve Armenian
interests.
He has urged people to hold mass rallies "so that the authorities
can understand that 70 per cent of the people [are] against it".
But many Armenians inside the country believe that "bread-and-butter"
realities must precede any lofty historical principles.
Relations with Turkey, they argue, are essential to improving
Armenia's crippled economy. They dismiss as irrelevant the protests
and condemnations by diaspora Armenians, many of whom are descendants
of survivors who fled Turkey in 1915.
They insist that the policies and economic vicissitudes of the Armenian
republic have no direct, or even indirect, impact on their lives, and
as such, those outside the country do not have the right to interfere.
Stabilising the region
Some Armenians fear that their claims of genocide may be ignored
[GETTY] Richard Giragosian, the director of the Armenian Centre for
National and International Studies in Yerevan, contends that "open
borders and normal relations are essential and stand as prerequisites
to development and stability".
"An agreement with Turkey would offer Armenia an immediate end to
the country's dependence on Georgia, and would do much to lessen
over-dependence on Russia by bringing Armenia closer to the West,
while also bringing Europe closer to Armenia," he says.
"And in a strategic sense, the normalisation with Turkey is an
imperative for overcoming the two strategic threats=2 0now facing
Armenia - isolation and insignificance."
Russia and Iran
But if the US is attempting to wean Armenia from its traditional
allies, notably Russia and Iran, and to alter the dynamics in the
Caucasus, there may be challenges.
"Armenian-Russian and Armenian-Iranian ties are immensely important
to Yerevan. They may be impossible to break given Armenia's survival
instincts.
Nothing will jeopardise that," says Kechichian.
"Lest we forget, both Russia and Iran provided vital assistance to
Armenia during some of its darkest hours after independence in 1991,
when the country confronted a systematic embargo that was akin to
strangulation.
"Moscow and Tehran may well have acted for their own strategic
reasons to aid Yerevan, but the critical support was a life-saver
nevertheless."
Energy rush
According to Harry Hagopian, a London-based international lawyer and
EU political consultant with the Paris-based Christians in Political
Action group, the geopolitical situation in the Caucasus has changed
drastically since the Georgia-Russia war.
He believes that it is not simply altering the political balance in
the region or possible membership of the European Union that is at
stake. The key issue, he says, is oil.
"Signing the protocol on the historic lands would allow Turkey to
use them for its energy and transport routes - including the Nabucco
pipeline project - without any possible legal prejudice.
=0 D "I do not claim that those lands could return to Armenia, but
a customary line has been gratuitously crossed in those protocols
between territorial integrity on the one hand and the recognition
of current borders on the other - a distinction which is applied by
many countries both in the Caucasus and elsewhere worldwide, so why
not in this instance too?" he points out.
Armenia's needs notwithstanding, the speed with which the protocols
were presented and are being imposed on the diaspora indicate that
powerful outside forces are at play.
For Yerevan, however, these must be secondary concerns given the
historical burden that the Armenia assumes on behalf of the Armenian
nation.
It remains to be seen whether decisions made by politicians will
bridge the growing gulf that has emerged between the two to three
million citizens of the Republic of Armenia and the estimated seven
to eight million Armenians living in the diaspora.
"The Armenian government erred when it did not consult more
transparently with the diaspora and [instead] sprang the agreement
on them in the way it did last August," says Hagopian.
"After all, just as Israel listens to its Jewish lobbies worldwide
and even uses them to pursue its national interests, Armenia should
have done the same with its own diaspora."
IWPR Report
ARMENIANS TAKE STOCK OF TURKEY PEACE DEAL
On eve of the historic agreement with Ankara, Armenians discuss its implications.
By Hasmik Hambardzumian in Yerevan, Yeranuhi Soghoian in Gyumri and Naira
Bulghadarian in Vanadzor
Hundreds of Armenians have gathered to discuss the impending peace deal with
Turkey at testy town hall meetings all over the country.
The two countries' borders have been closed to each others' trade and citizens for
almost the entire post-Soviet period. Turks accuse Armenia of aiding the occupation
of their allies in Azerbaijan, while Armenians accuse Turkey of failing to recognise
the deaths of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey in 1915 as genocide.
Over the last year, however, a more pragmatic tone has dominated relations, and
two protocols are due to be signed on October 10, according to the Turkish press,
that will pave the way for the border to open, trade to resume, and diplomatic ties
to be restored.
The deal has been a hot topic in Armenia, where citizens are divided between
welcoming the material possibilities of the deal, and worrying about the moral
compromises involved.
Mayranush, a resident of the north-eastern town of Gyumri, expressed the fears of
many by citing a racist anti-Turkish comment from a 19th century Armenian novelist.
She was speaking in one of a number of discussion groups set up by the International
Center for Human Development, ICHD, a non-governmental organisation based in
Yerevan.
But the opposite point of view was just as frequent, with many debaters seeing the
peace deal as key to ending their country's isolation and its reliance on the
precarious trade route through Georgia.
"With the opening of the border, our situation will also improve, trade will be activated,
and this will bring an economic benefit to Gyumri first of all," said one debater called
Gagik.
Since Armenia's border with Azerbaijan is also closed - as a result of the dispute over
Nagorny Karabakh, which is ruled by Armenians as a self-proclaimed independent state
- the potential opening of the Turkish border is hugely significant for Armenia. Its
over-reliance on Georgia was exposed last year, when the brief Russia-Georgian war
left Armenia all but cut off from its markets in Russia.
However, the historical bitterness caused by the deaths of Armenians in the last days
of the Ottoman Empire linger, and Turkey's refusal to recognise them as a genocide is
a hot political topic to this day.
The ICHD tried to encourage participants in the debates, which took place in 14 towns
across Armenia in the week starting September 28, to be as forthright as possible.
"The more people keep quiet, the fewer opinions there will be. Try to create at your tables
an atmosphere like that of a family," Tevan Poghosian, ICHD executive director, told the
participants of each debate. He later said he was pleased with the results.
"They argued, discussed their positions and expressed their fears. This was our main
aim, to give people the chance to express their viewpoints," he said after the debate.
At the discussion in Yerevan, a dominating fear was that Turkish businessmen would buy
up all Armenian land, and end up dominating the country. The Armenian government, they
feared, was so desperate to improve the country's parlous economic state that it would do
anything to appease investors.
"I am against concessions. How can our government do this? You can always find ways to
make money, but how can they be prepared to make concessions?" asked Tigran, an
economist in Yerevan.
"The Turks will fool us, whether we sign the documents or not. We must keep our eyes open,
but we must sign the documents and move forward."
A number of opposition parties have opposed the peace deals, as have members of the
Armenian diaspora, much of which is descended from people who fled the Ottoman Empire
and ended up in Europe, North America, the Middle East or elsewhere.
Some participants at the Yerevan discussions speculated that opening the border, and thus
pandering to local business interests, rather than those of Armenians worldwide, risked
cutting the country off from its global network, and turning it into an adjunct of Turkey.
They asked if it was worth paying that price, just to benefit the wealthy who currently dominate
the Armenian economy.
"Maybe we are already paying that price," said one of the organisers of the debate.
"If we start having relations with Turkey, we will lose the diaspora," responded Paruyr
Amirjanian, an economist in Yerevan.
The Yerevan discussion was the largest, with 267 of the total 1,251 attendees. The majority
of them approved of opening the borders, and Poghosian was confident that the results of the
events showed Armenians want a change.
"They are in favour of opening the border, but do not hide their fears of this," he said.
The three parties in parliament that support President Serzh Sarkisian have already said they
will help push the protocols through, meaning the peace deal should become law.
"The documents will enter into force only if both sides ratify them," said Poghosian after the I
CHD's discussions, but he was not confident parliament would consider the people's concerns
before going ahead with ratification.
"We have presented all of our findings before ratification, but only after ratification will the
protocols be implemented. Only then will the worries and demands of the population be taken
into account."
Hasmik Hambardzumian, Yeranuhi Soghoian, Naira Bulghadarian work for
www.panorama.am,
www.hetq.am and Radio Liberty respectively.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
