How Turks and Armenians see new ties

Story from BBC NEWS:
europe/8299996.stm

Published: 2009/10/10 06:55:59 GMT

Armenia and Turkey are set to normalise their ties after a century of
hostility stemming from the mass killings of Armenians under the
Ottoman Empire. The BBC’s Jonathan Head and Tom Esslemont analyse
attitudes towards the deal in both countries.

JONATHAN HEAD IN ISTANBUL

Turkey, a fast-growing regional power running the world’s 17th largest
economy, would appear, on the surface, to need a deal far less than
Armenia, a small, land-locked country still mired in post-Soviet
poverty. Yet the current Turkish government has pushed just as hard to
get it.

The governing AKP of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which came to
office in 2002, is focused far more on maintaining rapid economic
growth and rising living standards among its mainly poor and lower
middle-class voters than it is on old nationalist taboos.

To that end it has followed a foreign policy it calls "Zero Problems
With Neighbours".

As well as backing the peace process with Cyprus and launching a bold
initiative to end the conflict in the eastern Kurdish region, the AKP
has sought to speed up accession to the European Union.

Mending ties with Armenia is one of the conditions laid down for EU
membership.

Two obstacles

When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Turkey was among the first
countries to recognise Armenia as an independent state, but formal
diplomatic relations were never established.

There were two serious obstacles that Turkey argued had to be overcome
before diplomatic relations could be established.

One was to set aside any link to the Armenian campaign to have the mass
killing of ethnic Armenians by Turkish troops in 1915 categorized as
genocide, a term successive Turkish governments have refused to accept.

In that Turkey seems to have been successful. The protocol it is
signing agrees that the "historical dimension" will be studied by a
bilateral commission, to which international experts will contribute.

The other obstacle was over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in
Azerbaijan, a state with close ethnic links to Turkey.

When, in 1993, ethnic Armenian forces took control of large swathes of
territory around the enclave, the Turkish government closed the border
with Armenia.

Mr Erdogan has promised the Azeri government that border will not be
reopened until the conflict is resolved, and Armenian forces withdraw
from Azeri territory they have been occupying outside the enclave.

In practice, Turkish negotiators have put the issue aside, viewing it
as a parallel process which is being handled through mediation by the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). It is not
mentioned as a condition for signing the protocol formally establishing
diplomatic relations.

Positive signs?

As in Armenia, the Turkish government will have to put the deal to
parliament.

The nationalist opposition parties have said they will oppose it, but
Mr Erdogan has a comfortable majority and will almost certainly get it
through.

So long as discussion of the 1915 killings is kept low-key, most
Turkish voters will probably support him.

He could, however, be held to his promise to Azerbaijan over
Nagorno-Karabakh.

Progress is now visible over the enclave, following a three-hour
meeting between the Armenian and Azeri presidents in Moldova – enough,
perhaps, for Mr Erdogan to assuage his critics when he goes before
parliament.

The protocol envisages full relations being established within two
months of the signing ceremony in Zurich. All the signs are that this
will happen.

TOM ESSLEMONT IN YEREVAN

The mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in 1915-18 is
still a huge issue here. The fact that Turkey has not recognised them
as a systematic "genocide" is very painful, especially for those who
are descended from the victims of the deportations and executions.

The protocol mentions no pre-conditions for Turkey to officially
recognise genocide before ratifying it. That has struck a nerve with
those in the wider Armenian diaspora and here in the homeland.

It has sparked protests in cities with big Armenian populations,
including Beirut and Los Angeles.

At home, it led to one of the parliamentary parties – the "Dashnaks" –
pulling out of the governing coalition in protest.

So, why does the Armenian government want to pursue rapprochement at
all, given all the controversy?

The first reason is that the Armenian President Serge Sarkisian has
come under mounting pressure from the European Union to make progress.
He was strongly criticised by the West in 2008 after the authorities
orchestrated a violent crackdown on pro-opposition demonstrators in
Yerevan after a presidential election they say was rigged. Analysts say
he now needs a foreign policy success to boost confidence in his
leadership.

Secondly, there is great will on the part of the US and the EU to move
things forward in terms of rapprochement.

Thirdly, Armenia cannot afford in the long term to keep its borders
closed. Currently, trade with Turkey relies heavily on Georgia for
transit. Its border with another neighbour, Azerbaijan, remains closed
since the two went to war over the region of Nagorno Karabakh in the
1990s and Armenia would probably benefit economically from an open
border with Turkey.

‘National demand’

However, these reasons alone will not satisfy the opponents of
rapprochement.

Importantly, Armenians feel they have not been consulted on opening the
border with Turkey without Ankara’s recognition of genocide.

An editorial in Armenia’s Zhamanak newspaper in early September read:
"The point is that the issue of the genocide is a national demand,
which should not be made an axis of state policy."

As one anti-protocol demonstrator put it to me, even if the parliaments
of both countries ratify the document – which could take time –
opposition to the process of actually opening the border might even
grow.