US DIPLOMAT BACKS PROPOSED COMMISSION ON ARMENIAN ISSUE

Today’s Zaman
June 18 2009
Turkey

A senior US diplomat has indicated the Obama administration’s
support for Turkey’s almost five-year-old proposal to establish a
joint commission of historians to resolve the question of whether
the killings of Anatolian Armenians during World War I amounted
to genocide.

Remarks by Philip Gordon, assistant secretary of state for Europe
and Eurasian affairs, came on Tuesday at a hearing of the Foreign
Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives. The hearing,
chaired by Congressman Robert Wexler, was titled "Strengthening the
Transatlantic Alliance: An Overview of the Obama Administration’s
Policies in Europe."

Gordon recalled that he had recently paid visits to Armenia, Azerbaijan
and Georgia since he observed that there are both challenges and
opportunities in this region.

"You have two parallel but separate tracks going on; a Turkey-Armenia
normalization reconciliation process that we do think is quite
potentially historic, where the two countries have agreed on a
framework for normalizing their relations. That would include
opening the border, which has been closed for far too long, which
would establish diplomatic relations and would provide commissions
in key areas, including history," Gordon said. He was apparently
referring to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 2005 letter to
then-Armenian President Robert Kocharyan, inviting him to establish
a joint commission of historians and experts from both Turkey and
Armenia to study the events of 1915 using documents from the archives
of Turkey, Armenia and any other country believed to have played a
part in the issue.

At a joint press conference in Ankara during Obama’s landmark visit to
Turkey in early April, President Abdullah Gul recalled the proposal
and said: "If it has a high interest in this issue, any country —
for example, it may be the US, it may be France — can join this joint
commission of historians, and we are ready to [face] the results."

Gordon, meanwhile, also said: "And we encourage that process and
we support it. We have said that it is an independent process and
believe that it should move forward, regardless of whatever else is
happening in Europe or anywhere else, because both countries would
benefit. That said, it is nonetheless the case that at the same
time negotiations on Nagorno-Karabakh are going on between Armenia
and Azerbaijan, and that is part of the context in which the region
moves forward. And we’re encouraging that process as well. So, again,
our view is that these are separate tracks. They’re moving forward
at different speeds. But we are engaged vigorously on both, because
if both were to succeed, it really would be an historic opportunity
for the region, from which all three of those countries would benefit."

Gordon’s remarks found a rapid response from the US-based Armenian
diaspora. In a press release delivered later the same day, the Armenian
National Committee of America (ANCA) said, "The establishment of an
Armenia-Turkey commission of historians, a measure Turkey has long
sought to cast a doubt over the overwhelming historical record of
the Armenian genocide, stands in stark contrast to President Obama’s
statements during his campaign for the White House."