YEREVANGELISM
The Reality-Based Community
October 9, 2008 Thursday 12:29 AM EST
Oct. 9, 2008 (The Reality-Based Community delivered by Newstex) —
No quarrels with Mark’s assessment of the politics of recognizing
the Armenian genocide, other than to note that it may well
become a non-issue. Not for Armenian-American organizations,
but for the Armenian and Turkish governments. Unhatched Caucasian
chickens shouldn’t be counted more confidently than any others, but
Armenia-Turkey relations have been warming at a dizzying pace, with
Turkish President G???l visiting Yerevan recently. As one Armenian
analyst observesAnkara 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. 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." The Turkish
government, meanwhile, says thatIf we manage to make rapid progress
in our initiative to solve the problems…then there will be no need
for third country parliaments to discuss these issues. We can tell
them: "Mind your own business. Armenia and Turkey are getting along
well."Let’s hope that in 2012 the presidential candidates won’t have
to lie to Armenians or Jews. Newstex ID: TRBC-0001-28628862