ARMENIA, TURKEY: TENSE HALF-TIME
By Asbed Kotchikian for ISN Security Watch
ISN
International Relations & Security Network
June 26 2009
Switzerland
The Armenian president is criticized at home for his efforts to
address relations with Turkey, but on the international stage he is
scoring points. If he wishes to retain control at home, he will have
to play the next round of Armenia-Turkey talks in October carefully,
Asbed Kotchikian comments for ISN Security Watch.
As domestic turmoil in Iran and Georgia rise, Armenia is bracing
itself for the next round of foreign policy activism with Turkey.
The first municipal elections in the Armenian capital Yerevan on 31
May yielded the expected results when the ruling Republican Party
of Armenia won over 47 percent of the votes, which along with its
coalition ally Prosperous Armenia Party’s 23 percent, cemented
President Serge Sargsyan’s hold on power. The elections came over
a year after a hotly disputed presidential election, which gave the
presidency to Sargsyan and was followed by the bloody suppression of
mass demonstrations.
The timing and importance of the municipal elections was more relevant
to the country’s foreign policy than it was to any domestic or
municipal issue. Thus, in April, over a month before the municipal
elections, Armenia and Turkey announced that the governments of
both countries had come up with a roadmap to normalize the relations
and to eventually address the reopening of their borders, and more
importantly, to study the issue of Armenian demands that Turkey
recognize as genocide the mass killings of the Armenian population
under the Ottoman Empire in early 20th century.
When Sargsyan won the disputed presidential elections in February
2008, his position was very weak domestically, and as such he tried to
score some political points on the foreign policy front by inviting
Turkish President Abdullah Gul to visit Yerevan in September 2008
to attend a soccer match between Armenia and Turkey as part of the
World Cup qualifying games. Gul’s visit and the subsequent increase
in activities on the Armenian-Turkish talks led many analysts and
circles critical of Sargsyan to dub this as "soccer diplomacy."
The April announcement by the two governments received both heavy
criticism and great praise. The criticism came mostly from the Armenian
side, opposing Sargsyan, while the praise was spearheaded mostly by
diplomatic circles in the US, which seems to have heavily invested
in the process with the aim of increasing the political capital and
prestige of US diplomacy by resolving one of the major hurdles of
peace in the region.
While Sargsyan hoped that a diplomatic success with Turkey could
translate to increased political legitimacy at home, the result has
been quite the opposite: One of the more nationalist partners in the
ruling coalition, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, decided to
leave the coalition. This could explain why the Yerevan municipal
elections were a battleground to show political might as the capital
city includes more than one-third of the country’s electoral might. In
a reversal of order, Sargsyan seems to have utilized these elections
to boost his legitimacy on the foreign policy scene.
With the second soccer match between Armenia and Turkey scheduled
in October 2009 in Ankara, and because the Armenian president has a
standing invitation to visit from the Turkish president, it seems that
Sargsyan needs all the help he can get to increase his prestige as a
politician in control in an otherwise an increasingly uncontrollable
region.