Wall Street Journal
April 27 2009
‘We Are All Armenians’
Obama was right not to jeopardize reconciliation between Ankara and Yerevan.
By HUGH POPE From today’s Wall Street Journal Europe
ISTANBUL
President Barack Obama trod a fine moral line this month between his
past campaign promises to use the word genocide to describe the World
War I massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and his present
opportunity to nurture normalization between Armenia and Turkey. But
his compromise was no capitulation to the realpolitik of U.S.-Turkish
strategic interests, as some Armenians may suspect and some Turks may
hope. It is actually a challenge to both parties to move beyond the
stalemates of history.
APThe opportunity could hardly be better. After a decade of civil
society outreach and growing official engagement, Armenia and Turkey
jointly announced on Wednesday a Swiss-mediated deal to establish
diplomatic relations and open borders. The two sides will also set up
a bilateral commission to study what Armenians commemorate each April
24 as the beginning of a genocide against their people by the Ottoman
Turks in 1915, and what Turkey says were forced relocations, uprisings
and massacres during the chaos of World War I.
Before implementing the deal, however, Turkey is now seeking an
Armenian commitment to withdraw from territory in Azerbaijan that
ethnic Armenian forces occupied in the 1992-94 Nagorno-Karabakh
war. But Ankara would be ill-advised to hold up rapprochement with
Yerevan because of protests from its ally, Azerbaijan. In fact,
normalizing relations with Armenia is the best way for Turkey to help
its ethnic and linguistic Azerbaijani cousins. It would make Armenia
feel more secure, making it perhaps also more open to a compromise
over Nagorno-Karabakh.
The border closure these past 16 years has done nothing to force a
settlement over the contested region. The fragility of the 1994
cease-fire truce suggests that a new way forward is
imperative. Armenian normalization with Turkey will not be sustainable
in the long run, though, unless Yerevan and Baku agree to the ongoing
international Nagorno-Karabakh peace process, leading to Armenian
troop withdrawals.
It is this complex situation that explains Mr. Obama’s diplomatic
language. In this year’s April 24 memorial statement, the
U.S. president chose not to use the word "genocide" to describe the
events of 1915. The Turks resent this term partly because they want
their view of the events to be taken into account and partly because
the term genocide has potential legal implications involving possible
demands for reparations and compensation. The Swiss-brokered deal will
include an Armenian recognition of Turkey’s borders, banishing the
shadow of long-lingering territorial claims.
Instead, President Obama chose the Armenian term for the atrocities,
"Mets Yeghern," meaning "Great Man-Made Catastrophe." The
U.S. Congress, where a resolution to recognize the Armenian genocide
was introduced on March 17, may want to follow the president’s lead
and avoid confrontation in order to give the current Turkey-Armenia
normalization process a chance.
Armenians have a point when they argue that the past decade of
international resolutions and statements recognizing the Armenian
genocide have forced Turkey to end its blanket denial of Ottoman
wrongdoing. But such outside pressures have got no closer to making
Turkey accept the term genocide itself, especially when the bills
before Congress and other parliaments are clearly the result of
domestic political calculations rather than high-minded deliberation.
On the Armenian question, many Turks, including government officials
now publicly express regret over the loss of Armenian life. After more
than eight decades of silence, when any open discussion of what
happened in 1915 was considered taboo, the Turkish public is digesting
an onrush of new facts and opinions about those past events.
The past decade has seen much convergence between Turks and Armenians
in understanding the history of 1915 as academic exchanges have grown
and information become widely available. A 2005 conference on the
Armenian issue by the front ranks of the Turkish intelligentsia
demonstrated that the country’s academic and cultural elite wants to
do away with the old nationalist defensiveness. In the east of Turkey,
efforts have begun to preserve the surviving Armenian heritage. Far
from worsening Turkish-Armenian relations, the murder of
Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink in 2007 by a shadowy
nationalist gang triggered a march of 100,000 people in Istanbul
carrying signs saying "We Are All Armenians."
Opinion polls show two-thirds of Turks supported President Abdullah
Gül’s decision in September to accept his Armenian counterpart Serzh
Sarkisian’s invitation for a World Cup qualifier soccer match and to
become the first Turkish head of state to visit Armenia. Then in
December, 200 leading Turkish intellectuals began a signature campaign
to apologize for what they called the "Great Catastrophe" of the
Armenians. Nearly 30,000 people have signed it so far.
Overall, Turkey’s efforts with Armenia also fit into decade-long
efforts to improve ties with other neighboring countries. Ankara has
successfully normalized its once tense relations with Syria, Greece
and Iraqi Kurdistan. Ankara also tried its best to bring about a
reconciliation between Turkish and Greek Cypriots.
New trends are visible in Armenia too. As pride and security in the
new Armenian statehood grows, genocide recognition no longer overrides
all other national interests. Issues such as the need for more
economic opportunities, a broader-based regional strategy and an open
Turkish border that can be a direct gateway to the West are taking
center stage. Armenians increasingly spend their vacation in Turkish
resorts.
Change is also evident in the diaspora, which outnumbers the
population in Armenia and has a strong influence on Yerevan. The
Armenian community in France led an international campaign, joined by
Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan and more than 100 public intellectuals,
to say "Thank You" for the Turkish apology efforts. Armenian-French
intellectuals are increasingly seeking to reconnect with their
heritage by cultivating their links to Turkey and Turks and visiting
Istanbul.
As President Obama has recognized, it is this trend of convergence
that offers the best chance in decades to open the borders between
these two states, moving beyond nearly a century in which Turks and
Armenians have been held hostage to frozen conflicts, nationalist
confrontation and the ghosts of the past.
Mr. Pope, author of "Turkey Unveiled: A History of Modern Turkey," is
the Istanbul representative of International Crisis Group.
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