ARMENIA FM REACHES OUT TO TURKEY ON GENOCIDE RECOGNITION
by Haro Chakmakjian

Agence France Presse — English
November 26, 2006 Sunday 2:00 AM GMT

Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian is reaching out to historical
foe Turkey to normalise ties as the key step toward a political
settlement on the ultra-sensitive issue of genocide recognition.

"For Armenia, recognition (of the genocide) by Turkey is not
a precondition for normal, good neighbourly relations," the
Harvard-educated minister told AFP in an interview during a
presidential visit to Cyprus.

Nine decades after what the Armenians, backed by many historians,
term the genocide of some 1.5 million of their people in the Ottoman
empire, Oskanian said both countries needed to "transcend" the horrors
of their common past.

"This obstacle (of Turkish recognition) can be removed and memories
can be ameliorated by new experiences, by interaction between the
Turkish and Armenian people as neighbours," he said.

However, Oskanian scoffed at a proposal from Turkish Prime Minister
Tayyip Recep Erdogan for historians from both sides to form a
commission to study the bloody events of 1915-1917, which Ankara
refuses to classify as genocide.

"Erdogan’s suggestion was a smokescreen," he charged, asking how
any joint commission could be set up without diplomatic ties between
Ankara and Yerevan, capital of Armenia which gained independence from
the ex-Soviet Union in 1991.

"This is a political issue. You’ve got to address this issue from a
political angle."

Oskanian was also critical of what he called Turkey’s new "state
policy" of denial even as more countries join the ranks of states
that officially recognise the genocide.

"As more countries recognise, Turkey becomes — as the record shows —
more aggressive in its policy of denial … The Turks have never been
this organised at a state level to pursue a policy of denial," he said.

Oskanian pointed to an article in Turkish law which punishes those
who refer to the events of 1915 as genocide.

Dozens of intellectuals — among them 2006 Nobel literature laureate
Orhan Pamuk — have been brought to court under an amendment in the
penal law that makes it a crime to denigrate Turkish identity or
insult state institutions.

The French parliament’s adoption of a bill making public denial of
the genocide in France punishable by law was "a clear reaction to
the aggressive denialist policies of the Turkish government", he said.

Oskanian held little hope in Washington exerting pressure on its
Turkish ally on the genocide issue because of its strategic interests,
but it "must be more assertive in calling on Turkey to open the border"
and normalise ties.

The minister, who himself was born in Syria, denied any gulf between
Yerevan and Armenians of the diaspora, who outnumber their three
million compatriots in Armenia and have been at the forefront of a
worldwide recognition campaign.

"It’s the moral obligation of every Armenian in diaspora and in
Armenia to remember and to pursue recognition because we think that
will be the minimum compensation after almost 100 years," said the
51-year-old minister.

"Today we pursue recognition in different countries through their
parliaments and that can only be pursued by their countries’ citizens."

Oskanian tried to allay concerns that recognition could lead to
claims for compensation. "Armenia today has on its foreign policy
agenda only the issue of genocide recognition. That’s what we are
after as a nation," he said.

But he admitted that the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region inside
neighbouring Azerbaijan, where the Armenians set up a breakaway state
in 1992, posed a major obstacle for ties with Turkey.

Ankara’s "unequivocal solidarity with Azerbaijan also works against
Turkey because it undermines their credibility and weight in the
Caucusus … and their claim to be a bridge between East and West",
he charged.

Oskanian dismissed any similarity between Karabakh and a self-declared
Turkish Cypriot statelet in north Cyprus, insisting the former emerged
from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the latter from a recognised
UN member state.

He acknowledged that Cyprus, with its division, and Armenia were
proving obstacles to Turkey’s ambition to join the European Union,
but denied the two countries were working against Ankara.

"The purpose of our visit (to Cyprus) was to activate economic ties.

We do have common issues we discussed but we never ganged up against
anyone," Oskanian said.

On Friday, Armenian President Robert Kocharian, who hails from
Karabakh, laid the foundation stone for a genocide monument to be
built on the Larnaca seafront of Cyprus, where Armenian refugees from
Ottoman Turkey landed.

In rejecting the genocide label, Turkey argues that 250,000 to
500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife
when Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia
during World War I.