TURKEY, ARMENIA AND THE FRUITS OF GENOCIDE
Rose Pallone
Raffi K. Hovannisian

key-armenia-and-the-fruits-of-genocide/
Sep 28, 2009

Governments and commentators have hailed the two recently-announced
protocols between Turkey and Armenia. If signed and ratified, they
will provide a timetable for the opening of the Turkish-Armenian
border and the establishment of full diplomatic relations.

Unfortunately, the exuberance in Western capitals is based on energy
routes, geopolitics and the desire to smooth the way for Turkey as
a regional power and EU aspirant. It ignores the sinister aspects of
the deal.

Certainly, Armenia has long pushed for an end to the Turkish blockade
of Armenia, an open border and diplomatic relations with Turkey without
precondition. This has also been the stated U.S. and European position.

This approach acknowledges that the Armenian-Turkish relationship
is complicated and burdened by the Armenian Genocide. Open borders,
diplomatic relations and people-to-people contacts must come first
before Turkey and Armenia can begin to sort out a very difficult
legacy, issues of restitution and reparations and to what extent
Turkey should continue to enjoy the fruits of genocide.

The proposed protocols, however, will serve to meet two long-standing
Turkish preconditions to normalization of relations with Armenia. The
first is to forestall further progress in formal international
recognition of the Armenian Genocide. The second is to confirm and
help remove the juridical cloud from the Turkey Armenia frontier.

This frontier, which, under the Turkish blockade, is the last closed
border in Europe, lacks legal status. It is an important issue for
Turkey. The day after the protocols were announced, Turkey’s Foreign
Minister stated that recognition of the current boundary was a basic
element of the proposed agreements, without which, "we cannot talk
about being neighbors."

Turkey’s strategy to shirk its obligations to Armenia under
international law is to marginalize Armenia and to deny the Genocide,
in which 1.5 million Armenians were killed and the survivors
dispossessed of most of their 3,000 year-old homeland. Turkey uses
its growing strategic and economic power to enlist American and
European support for these initiatives. The offending provisions in
the proposed protocols are part of this process.

Armenia is small, land-locked and vulnerable. It previously resisted
Turkish preconditions to normalization. However, after elections marred
by fraud and political violence, the current Armenian administration
has been susceptible to Turkish, European and American pressure on
this issue. Given the legacy of the Armenian Genocide, European
and American roles in promoting, rather than objecting to, these
preconditions is outrageous.

In the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide, President Woodrow Wilson
fixed Turkey’s boundary with Armenia in an arbitral award issued under
U.S. presidential seal. This remains the only binding demarcation of
the Turkish-Armenian frontier in accordance with an agreement between
sovereign and independent Turkish and Armenian states.

Although the de jure border and the award of these territories to
Armenia continue to be legally valid, the 1920 invasion of Armenia
by Kemalist and Bolshevik forces sealed these lands in Turkey and
gave us the current de facto border.

The great irony is that a significant stretch of the energy and
transport routes that are the sources of an emerging Turkish power
pass through these territories, which were also the killing fields
of the Armenian Genocide. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and
the parallel natural gas South Caucasus Pipeline do. So will the
proposed Nabucco pipeline project. These territories and projects,
so vital to Turkey’s goal to become a major international energy hub,
are the fruits of genocide. And Armenia enjoys none of their political
and economic benefits.

Sadly, open hatred of Armenians is everywhere in Turkey, in
official and semi-official media, in the state school system, in
state-sanctioned discrimination and elsewhere in and out of government.

Of course, the pinnacle of this hatred is genocide denial, which
genocide scholars tells us constitutes the final stage of genocide. But
consider the Turkish Defense Minister who asks rhetorically whether
the present Turkish nation state would have been possible without
the elimination of the Armenian population or the Turkish President
who charges an opposition Turkish parliamentarian with defamation
for alleging he has Armenian roots. Remember the murder of the
Turkish-Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, or the planned attacks on
Turkish-Armenian community leaders by Ergenekon, the ultranationalist
organization associated with what in Turkey is referred to as the
"Deep State."

With the demonization of Armenians in Turkish nationalist ideology,
an official policy of genocide denial and Ankara’s proven hostility
to the reborn Armenian state, that the West does not actively oppose
Turkish preconditions should give everyone pause.

The enduring legacy of the Armenian Genocide is not just a challenge
for Turkey and Armenia. It is also a challenge for Europe and
America. The West, despite growing Turkish power and influence, should
encourage Turkey to take responsibility for the Armenian Genocide,
not assist Turkey in compelling Armenia to agree to preconditions
that humiliate the victimized party and prejudice the integrity and
outcome of any future genuine reconciliation process between Turkey
and Armenia.

Ultimately, the Turkish-Armenian conversation must include two thorny
issues: first, to what extent Turkey should continue to enjoy the
fruits of genocide and second, the integrity of the border it shares
with Armenia.

Raffi Hovannisian was independent Armenia’s first minister of foreign
affairs.