TURKISH-ARMENIAN DIALOGUE ON THE VERGE OF COLLAPSE
By: Emil Danielyan

Jamestown Foundation
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April 14 2009

The nearly year-long negotiations between Armenia and Turkey look set
to prove fruitless after Ankara has revived its long-standing linkage
between the normalization of bilateral ties and a resolution of the
Karabakh conflict. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has
repeatedly made clear this month that his government will not establish
diplomatic relations with Yerevan and re-open the Turkish-Armenian
border without Azerbaijan’s consent. In Armenia and especially
amongst its worldwide diaspora, meanwhile, there are growing calls
for President Serzh Sarkisian to abandon the Western-backed talks.

The success of those talks seemed a foregone conclusion in the weeks
leading up to President Barack Obama’s visit on April 6-7. According
to reports in both the Turkish and Western media, Armenia and Turkey
have finalized an agreement on gradually normalizing their strained
relations and setting up inter-governmental commissions dealing with
various issues of mutual interest. Some of those reports quoted unnamed
Turkish officials as saying that the agreement could be signed during
or shortly after Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian’s trip
to Istanbul on April 6. The resulting outcry in Azerbaijan (EDM,
April 10) suggested that Ankara and Yerevan were indeed very close
to cutting a far-reaching deal.

Erdogan called into question the possibility of such a deal when
he told a news conference in London on April 3 that Turkey cannot
reach a "healthy solution concerning Armenia" as long as the Karabakh
dispute remains unresolved (Today’s Zaman, April 4). He reaffirmed
the linkage on April 8, two days after Obama stated in Ankara that
the Turkish-Armenian negotiations were "moving forward and could
bear fruit very quickly, very soon." The Turkish premier went as
far as demanding that the U.N. Security Council denounce Armenia
as an "occupier" and called for Karabakh’s return under Azeri rule
(Hurriyet Daily News, April 9).

Any doubts about the practical implications of these statements
were dispelled by Erdogan during his holiday in southern Turkey on
April 10: "We will not sign a final deal with Armenia unless there
is agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia on Karabakh," he told
journalists (Anatolia news agency, April 10). In an interview with
the Azerbaijani newspaper Zerkalo published the following day, the
deputy chairman of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, Haluk
Ipek, said the Turkish-Armenian border will remain closed for at
least ten more years. Ipek dismissed speculation over its impending
re-opening as "dishonest" Armenian propaganda aimed at driving a
wedge between the two Turkic nations. Turkey’s more dovish President
Abdullah Gul likewise underscored the importance of Karabakh’s peace
when he commented on Turkish-Armenian reconciliation in an interview
with The Financial Times on April 8.

That the Turkish-Armenian dialogue is reaching an impasse was
effectively acknowledged by Sarkisian at an April 10 news conference:
"Is it possible that we were mistaken in our calculations and
that the Turks will now adopt a different position and try to set
preconditions? Of course it is possible," he said (Armenian Public
Television, April 10). The Armenian leader insisted that Karabakh
has not been on the agenda of that dialogue. Indeed, Ankara was
clearly ready to stop linking Turkish-Armenian relations with a
Karabakh settlement acceptable to Baku when it embarked on a dramatic
rapprochement with Yerevan last summer. The two countries’ foreign
ministers would have hardly held numerous face-to-face meetings since
if it was not.

For his part, Sarkisian signaled his acceptance, in principle,
of a Turkish proposal to form a joint commission of historians
tasked with examining the 1915-1918 mass killings of Armenians in
the Ottoman Empire. One of the Turkish-Armenian commissions which the
governments reportedly agreed to form would conduct such a study. The
idea was floated by Erdogan in 2005 and rejected by then Armenian
President Robert Kocharian as a Turkish ploy designed to scuttle
greater international recognition of what many historians consider
the first genocide of the twentieth century. Turkish leaders have made
no secret of using the fence-mending negotiations with the Sarkisian
administration to discourage Obama from making good on his election
campaign promise to describe the slaughter of more than one million
Ottoman Armenians as genocide.

The almost certain collapse of the talks has left Armenian politicians
and pundits questioning the wisdom of further Armenian overtures to the
Turks. "If Turkey suddenly succumbs to Azerbaijan’s threats and these
negotiations yield no results soon, then I think the Armenian side
will not carry on with them," said Giro Manoyan, a senior member of the
Armenian Revolutionary Federation, a nationalist party represented in
Sarkisian’s coalition government (Hayots Ashkhar, April 10). Former
Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian likewise advocated, in an April
7 interview with RFE/RL, Yerevan’s pullout from the reconciliation
process if the sixteen year Turkish blockade of Armenia is not lifted.

Such views are indicative of the dominant mood in the Armenian
diaspora and, in particular, the influential Armenian community
within the United States. Harut Sassounian, a prominent community
activist and commentator, criticized Armenia’s policy on Turkey,
effectively blaming it for Obama’s failure to publicly use the word
"genocide" during his visit to Turkey. "In view of these developments,
it is imperative that the Armenian government terminates at once all
negotiations with the Turkish leaders in order to limit the damage
caused by the continued exploitation of the illusion of productive
negotiations," Sassounian wrote in an April 9 editorial by his Los
Angeles-based newspaper California Courier.

Sarkisian insisted on April 10 that the dialogue with Turkey can
be deemed beneficial for the Armenian side even if it produces no
tangible results. He said Armenia will "emerge from this process
stronger" in any case because the international community will have no
doubts that "we are really ready to establish relations [with Turkey]
without preconditions."