TURKEY, ARMENIA MISS OPPORTUNITY FOR RAPPROCHEMENT
Emil Danielyan 6/03/05

EurasiaNet Organization
June 3 2005

An initiative to promote a thaw in Armenian-Turkish relations appears
to have fallen flat. The leaders of the two countries recently
exchanged unprecedented diplomatic notes that explored rapprochement
possibilities. But the letters did not achieve the desired effect of
easing decades of mutual animosity.

The inability of Armenian President Robert Kocharian and Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to meet on the sidelines of a Council
of Europe summit in Warsaw in mid-May signaled the collapse of the
rapprochement initiative.

Erdogan reportedly refused to meet Kocharian because of the latter’s
renewed calls during the summit for international recognition of
the 1915-1923 slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire as genocide. Turkey vehemently denies that the mass
killings constituted a genocide, insisting that Ottoman Armenians
died in much smaller numbers and mainly as a result of civil strife.

Erdogan responded angrily to Kocharian’s statements at the summit.
“Turkey cannot accept such baseless allegations,” he told a separate
news conference in the Polish capital.

Armenia scoffed at the criticism of Turkish leaders, with Foreign
Minister Vartan Oskanian saying that policy makers in Ankara
“naively” thought that Kocharian himself would request a meeting
with Erdogan. Oskanian additionally accused the Turkish leadership of
insincerity, alleging that Ankara never had any intention of altering
its policy position.

“As a result of wrong Turkish calculations, the more or less favorable
atmosphere created by the exchange of letters was spoiled,” Oskanian
told Armenian state television on May 20. “We took a step backward
in Turkish-Armenian relations because of the Turks.”

Erdogan wrote to Kocharian in April suggesting that the two countries,
which have no diplomatic relations, set up a commission of historians
that would look into the 1915 events and determine whether they
were indeed a genocide. The unusual move came ahead of the April 24
worldwide ceremonies commemorating the 90th anniversary of the start
of mass killings and deportations. It was welcomed by the United
States and some European leaders.

But Kocharian effectively rejected the idea, contending that the
Armenian genocide was already an established fact. At the same time,
he called for the creation of an Armenian-Turkish inter-governmental
commission that would discuss all issues of mutual concern, including
the genocide controversy.

In response to Kocharian’s offer, Turkish officials suggested that
the two contending proposals could be combined. “On the one hand,
political relations could be established,” Erdogan said in a newspaper
interview on April 29. “On the other hand, the work (on the historical
archives) could continue.”

As leaders of the two countries engaged in political maneuvering
in late April and early May, speculation mounted that Kocharian and
Erdogan might hold their first-ever face-to-face meeting during the
Warsaw summit May 16-17. As it turned out, however, the parties did
not even come close to achieving a breakthrough in Warsaw.

Erdogan made clear afterward that a pre-condition for rapprochement
between Yerevan and Ankara was a settlement between Armenia and
Azerbaijan of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. [For background see
the Eurasia Insight archive]. Turkey maintains an economic embargo
against Armenia as part of an effort to provide diplomatic support
for Azerbaijan during the search for a lasting Karabakh peace deal.
[For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

The Turkish prime minister also called on Armenia to halt efforts to
secure international recognition for the 1915-23 events as genocide.
The Turkish daily Zaman reported on May 31 that Ankara plans no
further diplomatic initiatives on the Armenian front.

The Armenian leadership, for its part, insists that the two nations
must establish diplomatic relations, and that Ankara must lift
the embargo against Armenia, before the two governments can tackle
contentious issues.

As Armenia and Turkey explored the rapprochement, the United States
remained diplomatically inactive, according to an Armenian source
privy to Turkish-Armenian dealings. US officials reportedly didn’t
offer to broker direct discussions between Kocharian and Erdogan in
Warsaw, dashing all hopes for such a meeting.

“The Bush administration has a long list of priorities when it
comes to Turkey, and I’m afraid that Armenian issues are the bottom
of that list,” David Phillips, a renowned scholar who chaired the
Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC), said in a recent
interview. TARC was a US-sponsored panel of retired diplomats and
pundits that operated between 2001-2004 to promote reconciliation.

Perhaps TARC’s important accomplishment during was a study jointly
commissioned by its Turkish and Armenian members from the International
Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), a New York-based human rights
organization. The ICTJ concluded in a 2003 report that the massacres
of Ottoman Armenians technically fit the definition of genocide set by
a 1948 UN convention. However, the ICTJ report also stressed that the
1948 Convention’s provisions did not allow “retroactive application”
to events that occurred prior to the treaty’s adoption. Thus, Armenians
could not use the convention to claim any material compensation from
modern-day Turkey.

At present, Turkey is facing strong pressure from the European Union
as Ankara prepares to open accession talks with the bloc in October.
France, for example, wants the genocide issue to be on the agenda of
those talks, with President Jacques Chirac repeatedly urging Turkey
to address its contentious past. [For background information see the
Eurasia Insight archive].

The issue is also used by opponents of Turkish membership in the EU.
Germany’s opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which is well
placed to defeat incumbent Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social
Democrats in upcoming parliamentary elections, has sponsored
a Bundestag resolution calling on Ankara to “take historic
responsibility” for the 1915 massacres.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress