EX-FM OF ARMENIA: ARMENIAN-TURKISH PROTOCOLS HAVE ALREADY DAMAGED ARMENIA’S POSITIONS ON THE THREE MOST SIGNIFICANT ISSUES OF NATIONAL SECURITY AND NATIONAL IDENTITY

ArmInfo
2009-10-14 15:53:00

ArmInfo. Ex-Foreign Minister of Armenia Vartan Oskanyan thinks that the
Armenian-Turkish protocols have already damaged, possibly irrevocably,
Armenia’s positions on the three most significant issues of national
security and national identity. Ex-FM of Armenia expressed his opinion
in the Article published in today’s issue of Aravot newspaper.

"We want the documents that define our reciprocal relationship to be
respectful, farsighted and most of all, sustainable. These protocols
are not. Moreover, the protocols have already damaged Armenia’s
positions on the three most significant issues of national security
and national identity", Oskanyan thinks. According to him, first,
they will hamper the resolution of the Karabakh conflict. "The reason
for this is simple. Any Armenian insistence of no-linkage between
Armenia-Turkey and Armenian-Azerbaijani is not credulous. The linkage
between the Turkey border opening and the resolution of the Karabakh
conflict was clear from the beginning. Now, it’s inarguable. If the
presence of the Minsk Group co-chair countries’ foreign ministers
at the signing wasn’t enough, there were the last minute frantic
attempts at the signing ceremony to prevent Turkey from speaking of
that linkage at that forum. But the coup de grace was the Turkish
Prime Minister’s unequivocal conditional announcement the day after,
buttressed by the strength of his ruling party whose meeting had just
concluded, that the Turkish Parliament won’t ratify these protocols
until territories are returned", Oskanyan said. "Any acceptable
resolution will require certain compromise on the Armenian side –
including compromise on the territories surrounding Karabakh. Many
would say that such compromise would have been necessary eventually
regardless of Armenia-Turkey relations. This is true.

But in this conditional environment, when Turkey at every opportunity
refers to the return of territories without the resolution of
Karabakh’s status, even the most reasonable compromise that Armenia
would have been prepared to make will be more difficult for this or
any administration to make, because it will be viewed domestically
as a concession made under pressure, in exchange for open borders,
not for the independence of Karabakh. Even if the Turkish parliament
ratifies the protocols and opens the border with the mere expectation
that Armenians will return those territories in the near future, still,
in the context of the forceful and repeated admonitions by the Turkish
leadership, those expectations will themselves become conditions that
the border opening was in exchange for possible future concessions",
Oskanyan added. "Second, the nature of the genocide debate has been
deeply altered.

The ink on the protocols was not even dry before major news outlets
and international figures began to couch their terminology, retreating
from the use of the term genocide, citing the protocol’s provisions
that a commission will determine what the events of 1915 really
were. Armenians will now be dragged into a new cycle of denial –
struggling against the machinery of a state bent on rewriting history
and consolidating the consequences of genocide", Oskanyan said.

Finally, this document succeeds in touching what had heretofore
been a dormant but sensitive issue – the subject of borders and
territorial claims.

No Armenian administration had ever made such a claim of Turkey. Today,
this sensitive issue has become a front-line issue. When Turkish
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu says these protocols reaffirm the
provisions of the Lausanne Treaty, that means the issue of reparation
and compensation is now on the table. I do not demand my ancestral
home in Marash, but if that demand were really so illusive, then why
is Turkey forcing me to renounce my historic links with that home?

It is important to understand that the claim on land is not merely
a sentimental issue having to do with Armenian properties in Turkey
100 years ago. The issue of lands is also an important element of
the Karabakh conflict. If a mere 100 years later, Turkey is able to
formalize and legalize its control of lands taken forcibly, then what’s
to prevent Armenians from waiting if that offers them the opportunity
to formalize their control of the lands surrounding Karabakh?

On Saturday, October 10, we heard President Sargsyan’s address to the
Armenian people, issued just hours ahead of the scheduled signing,
the content of which was directly contradictory to the content of
the protocols.

It can even be said that the president’s arguments were the best
reasons to reject the protocols. The address insisted that there are
irrefutable realities and we have undeniable rights; the protocols on
the other hand question the first and eliminate the second. Armenia,
without cause and without necessity, conceded its historic rights,
both regarding genocide recognition and what the address so justly
called ‘hayrenazrkum’ – a denial and dispossession of our patrimony.

The administration said one thing and signed another. Normalization
of Armenia-Turkey relations, as an idea even, has been discredited.

The processes – both Armenia-Turkey, and the Karabakh peace talks –
are going to become more complicated and more intense, and not at all
to our advantage. If Armenia does not bring this process to a halt, and
return to square one, the consequences will be grave not just for the
administration, but for the Armenian people", ex-FM of Armenia said.