TURKEY PUSHES FOR MORE NAGORNO-KARABAKH TALKS AMID WARMING TIES WITH ARMENIA
Emil Danielyan

EurasiaNet
9/29/08
NY

EURASIA INSIGHT

Turkey is sponsoring additional Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations
on the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in an apparent effort
to hasten the normalization of its historically strained ties with
Armenia.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan sat down with his Azerbaijani
and Armenian counterparts in New York on September 26 as Ankara
sought to keep up the momentum in its unprecedented rapprochement
with Yerevan. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. The
trilateral meeting came amid signs that the United States and other
international mediators will make another attempt to hammer out a
framework peace accord on Karabakh before the end of this year.

Babacan and Foreign Ministers Eduard Nalbandian of Armenia and
Elmar Mammadyarov of Azerbaijan disclosed few details about their
discussions, telling journalists only that they focused on a Turkish
proposal to create a new regional organization that would include the
three South Caucasus states as well as Russia and Turkey. "We discussed
the Caucasus Cooperation and Stability Platform, an initiative proposed
by Turkey, and started negotiating on some concrete regional issues
during today’s meeting," Babacan said in remarks broadcast by Armenian
state television. He said Nalbandian and Mammadyarov reaffirmed their
countries’ support for the platform and asked the Turkish side to
initiate more tripartite talks.

The three ministers’ meeting, held on the sidelines of the UN General
Assembly, is widely linked to a dramatic thaw in Turkish-Armenian
relations that culminated in Turkish President Abdullah Gul’s historic
September 6 visit to Yerevan. His talks there with Armenian President
Serzh Sargsyan raised hopes for the establishment of diplomatic
relations and the reopening of the border between the two neighboring
states. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Turkey has
long made the normalization of relations with Armenia conditional
on a resolution of the Karabakh conflict acceptable to Azerbaijan,
a country with which it has a close ethnic and cultural affinity.

The Turkish-Armenian "football diplomacy" raised fears in Azerbaijan
that Ankara might soon drop this precondition in return for Armenian
concessions on other issues. Gul clearly sought to allay these fears
when he flew to Baku just days after his trip to Yerevan. Both he
and other Turkish officials stressed the importance of a Karabakh
settlement for Turkish-Armenian dialogue. "These two processes have
a mutually reinforcing character – any positive development on one
would significantly have a stimulating effect on the other," Babacan
wrote in a commentary published by the International Herald Tribune
on September 23.

"It will be much easier for the Turks to move forward with Armenia
if there is progress on Nagorno-Karabakh," one well-informed Western
observer dealing with Turkey and the region told EurasiaNet. Just
how they hope to help achieve a breakthrough in the long-running
Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks is not clear.

While the Armenian leadership continues to believe that Turkey
is inherently unfit to act as an impartial Karabakh mediator, it
does not object to some kind of a Turkish involvement in the peace
process. In a September 24 speech, Sargsyan stressed that the Turks
can only "assist" in that process by creating a "positive atmosphere"
for US, Russian and French mediators acting under the aegis of the
OSCE’s so-called Minsk Group.

Armenia and Azerbaijan are understood to have already agreed on
most of the basic principles of Karabakh peace that were formally
put forward by the mediators in November 2007. The framework peace
accord envisages a gradual settlement of the bitter conflict that
would let Karabakh’s predominantly Armenian population to determine
the disputed territory’s status in a future referendum.

At the start of 2008, US officials involved in the peace process
were optimistic that the conflicting parties could bridge their
few remaining differences and conclude a peace deal by the end of
the year. The ensuing political turmoil in Armenia, along with a
toughening of the rhetoric coming out of Baku, seemed to dash those
early hopes. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and his new Armenian
counterpart, Sargsyan, re-energized the talks when they held their
first face-to-face meeting in Saint-Petersburg, Russia, in June.

Russia’s war with Georgia appears to have heightened the Western
and possibly Russian mediators’ sense of urgency. Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State Matthew Bryza, Washington’s top Karabakh negotiator,
indicated during a recent visit to the conflict zone that the
outgoing US administration will step up its efforts to resolve the
Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute in the coming weeks. "The recent events
in Georgia underscore the importance of a timely resolution of the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," Bryza told a news conference in Baku on
September 18.

Bryza and the French and Russian diplomats co-chairing the Minsk Group
are now pushing for another meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani
presidents. According to the Armenian Foreign Ministry, Nalbandian
and Mammadyarov discussed the possibility of such a meeting during
their separate talks in the mediators’ presence in New York earlier
on September 26. Speaking to journalists after his September 16 talks
in Moscow with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Aliyev said there
is now "a good basis" for ending the Karabakh conflict.

Gul similarly spoke of his "feelings of great content and optimism" as
he returned to Ankara from Baku on September 11. Armenia and Azerbaijan
both have "an honest and sincere desire for a settlement," he said,
according to the Anatolia news agency. Writing in the Turkish Daily
News on September 25, Cengiz Candar, a veteran Turkish columnist,
said Ankara expects an Armenian-Azerbaijani deal to be cut shortly
after the October 15 presidential election in Azerbaijan, which the
incumbent Aliyev is widely expected to win. "Diplomatic ties between
Turkey and Armenia will be formed concurrently, and the sides will
announce the opening of borders," he said.

What the Turkish government will do if the Karabakh conflict remains
unresolved is an open question. Ankara and Yerevan are reportedly close
to overcoming another Turkish precondition for normalizing bilateral
ties: an end to the decades-long Armenian campaign for international
recognition of the World War One-era massacres of Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire as genocide. The Sargsyan administration seems ready to
accept a Turkish proposal to form a commission of Turkish and Armenian
historians that would jointly study the mass killings and deportations.

Many in Armenia and especially its worldwide Diaspora oppose such a
study, saying that it would call into question the very fact of what
many historians consider the first genocide of the 20th century. They
also view the Turkish proposal as a ploy designed to scuttle the
genocide’s recognition by more foreign nation. [For background see
the Eurasia Insight archive].

Sargsyan appeared to dismiss such concerns as he addressed hundreds
of influential members of the Armenian-American community in New
York on September 24. "We must talk about all topics," he said. "Only
those people who have nothing to say and suffer from complexes avoid
contacts, conversations."

Editor’s Note: Emil Danielyan is a Yerevan-based journalist and
political analyst.