TURKISH-ARMENIAN SOCCER DIPLOMACY
Ralph Boulton

Reuters
Sept 5 2008
UK

Following the national soccer team to a foreign country is usually a
safe enough bet for any national leader. Photographs of the president
or premier smiling and waving, the local colour, the national flags
all play well at home; a few platitudes to charm the local press and
a handshake. Simple, harmless political fun.

When Turkish President Abdullah Gul visits Yerevan this weekend for
Turkey’s World Cup qualifier against Armenia, however, there will be
nothing simple about it.

For the two countries, divided over a wartime slaughter that occurred
early in the last century, it will be a historic moment, fraught
with perils.

For many Armenians, Gul’s presence will be an act of sheer effrontery
by a state they accuse of an act of genocide against the Armenian
people; an act of savagery by the old, collapsing Ottoman Empire for
which they demand an apology and redress.

For many nationalist Turks, his unprecedented venture, the first
visit to Armenia by a Turkish leader, borders on betrayal of their
country which they say committed no genocide. Hundreds of thousands,
Turks and Armenians alike, they argue, died in the fierce fighting
that consumed the region. Opposition leader Deniz Baykal gave a taste
of that mood, remarking sarcastically that Gul should lay a wreath
at the Yerevan genocide monument.

Recklesness or statesmanship? Whichever it is, if it is either, it is
arguably an act of political courage — as was the invitation issued
by Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan. Gul might have left well alone
as generations of Turkish leaders have done before him. Few in Turkey
or Armenia, would have raised an eyebrow.

There may well be anti-Turkish demonstrations in Yerevan and rumblings
at home. Gul, a naturally mild-mannered man, must watch his words
and his body language. Maybe soccer diplomacy could break the ice
between Armenia and Turkey in the same way ping-pong diplomacy launched
relations between the United States and Communist China.

Gul’s visit to Armenia is the latest in a string of Turkish foreign
policy interventions around his country’s troubled border areas,
involving Syria, Iran, Israel, Iraq and more recently Georgia. Gul
and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan might be seen as pandering to a
foreign policy fantasy nurtured by Washington and Brussels of a Turkey
building bridges between the West and the Arab world, helping secure
the energy routes of the Caucasus and healing the wound of Cyprus;
but Ankara is pursuing its own vested interests. While the Turkish
economy may prosper in Istanbul or central Anatolia, the country’s
east remains steeped in poverty.

Why? Look around.

Eastern Turkey is caught, effectively, in a dead end, surrounded
by closed or virtually closed borders and weak neighbouring
economies. Armenia is one such neighbour, but an important one.

A landlocked country still emerging from the ruins of the Soviet
Union, Armenia also suffers from a closed border with its huge
western neighbour.

The argument about whether or not the events of the last century were
an act of systematic killing, a genocide, will continue with a passion.

The idea that governments write history or interpret it is not one
that sits easily with me. I’ve lived in countries where the history
books are written by the government or the Party.

The Turks have compromised themselves over decades on this count
by prosecuting historians or journalists who dare to entertain the
question of whether there was genocide; but things in Turkey are
changing. The country is opening, if not quickly enough for some.

Armenians might argue that the killing in what is today eastern Turkey
is not history but very much a modern event for families driven into
exile and living with the consequences. Some of those exile families,
from Paris to Los Angeles, are among the most vocal proponents of
diplomatic action against Turkey.

Soccer matches can be emotional occasions. Turkish and Armenian
colours will vie for attention. Hopefully, the emotion this time will
be confined largely to the action on the pitch, but politics will
be foremost in many people’s minds, within and beyond the borders of
Turkey and Armenia.

A risky and courageous political act by Gul or a move long overdue
for both Turkey and Armenia? Much depends on what comes after the
final whistle. Both sides are showing good will. The Armenians, for
instance, are removing from the emblems on their kit the image of
Mount Ararat, a mountain now in Turkey but closely linked to Armenian
culture and history.

As Turkish national coach Fatih Terim said on Tuesday, the team is
going to Yervan ‘to play a game and not to fight a war’.