OBAMA STATEMENT HAS TURKS FUMING
Thomas Seibert
The National
8/FOREIGN/704279916/-1/NEWS
April 28 2009
UAE
"The dream is over" was how one Turkish newspaper put it yesterday.
Just three weeks after hosting the US president, Barack Obama, in a
visit that many saw as the confirmation of a strong and strategic
partnership between Ankara and Washington, Turkey’s political
leaders and media are up in arms after a statement by the president
commemorating the massacres committed against Armenians in the dying
days of the Ottoman Empire in 1915.
"Turkey is not a country that can be first pampered and then deceived,"
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech last weekend,
in reference to the praise showered on Turkey by Mr Obama during
his visit.
When Mr Obama issued his first statement on the Armenian question as
president last week, he avoided the term "genocide" that is strongly
rejected by Turkey. But even without using the word and choosing the
Armenian term meds yeghern – great catastrophe – instead, the president
made sure everyone understood that he is convinced that a genocide took
place in 1915, as he had said during his election campaign last year.
"I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915 and my
view of that history has not changed," the president said. "My interest
remains the achievement of a full, frank and just acknowledgement of
the facts."
Mr Erdogan called the president’s statement "unacceptable" and repeated
Turkey’s position that the question of what happened in 1915 should
be left to historians.
Armenia and many international scholars say that up to 1.5 million
Armenians became victims of a genocide ordered by the Ottoman
government against the Christian minority, but Turkey rejects that
label and says that Armenians died in the course of a relocation
campaign under wartime conditions.
Turkey’s president, Abdullah Gul, criticised Mr Obama for failing
to mention that many Ottoman Muslims also lost their lives at the
time. The parliamentary speaker, Koksal Toptan, said Mr Obama’s
statement would have a "serious negative effect" on efforts to
normalise relations between Turkey and Armenia.
A cautious rapprochement between the two countries started last year
when Mr Gul became the first Turkish head of state to visit Yerevan.
Shortly before Mr Obama’s statement last week, Turkey and Armenia
said they had agreed on a road map for the normalisation of their
ties. The two neighbours have no diplomatic relations and the border
between the two countries has been closed for more than a decade.
Mr Obama said he supported efforts by Turkey and Armenia to "forge
a relationship that is peaceful, productive and prosperous".
Few observers in Turkey had expected Mr Obama to use the term genocide
after he had praised the reconciliation efforts during his visit to
Turkey earlier this month.
"There has been courageous and important dialogue among Armenians and
Turks and within Turkey itself," the president said in his statement.
But even though the president did not use the "g-word", as some Turkish
newspapers call the term genocide, the way he described the Ottomans’
actions against the Armenians was so damning for Turkey that the one
word that was missing did not really matter in the end, observers said.
"Obama did not say ‘genocide’, but it was as if he had said
it," the columnist Semih Idiz wrote in yesterday’s Milliyet
newspaper. Washington may be of the opinion that Mr Obama had
"technically" followed Turkey’s wish to avoid the term, but Ankara’s
reaction was still strong, Idiz wrote.
One reason why Turkey does not want the US to officially use the term
genocide for events that took place several years before today’s
Turkish republic was founded in 1923 is the fear that such a move
will trigger an avalanche of political consequences.
"This year Obama only went so far, next year he will say ‘genocide,’
and then all other countries will recognise it, and they will say
‘recognition by Turkey is a precondition for EU entry,’" wrote another
columnist, Ruha Mengi in the Vatan newspaper. "Then territorial and
compensation demands will come."
Mr Erdogan is already under pressure from ally Azerbaijan, a long-time
foe of Armenia, and from his opposition at home who have warned
against opening the Turkish-Armenian border without a solution of the
conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed region of
Nagorny-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan.
But the anger expressed by Turkey’s leaders and media about Mr Obama’s
statement does not mean that Ankara will put talks with Armenia on
hold. Turkey’s foreign minister, Ali Babacan, acknowledged last week
that it would be difficult to reach the goal of full normalisation
in Turkish-Armenian relations.
"It is not easy, it is very complicated, but we go forward step by
step like in a game of chess."
Murat Yetkin, a columnist of the Radikal newspaper, wrote that
Mr Obama’s statement had avoided a full-scale collapse of the
process. "The ship continues to float, it has been saved from hitting
the ground."
Turkey may also draw consolation from the fact that the much-criticised
statement of Mr Obama did not fully live up to Armenian expectations
either.
"Obama’s statement made nobody happy," Yetkin wrote. "Sometimes
the common denominator of politics is not everybody’s happiness,
but everybody’s unhappiness."