CALL FOR PEACE FAILS IN TURKEY

News.am
14:03 / 10/17/2009

Supporters of the Armenia-Turkey pact (U.S. and the E.U.) hope it will
stabilize the region which after the Georgia-Russian war has become
crucial for oil and gas transit. However, in Kars – a historically
Armenian city now on the Turkish territory, people are skeptical
about the normalization as they point to the Monument to Humanity
symbolizing unity between the two nations.

"The statue of two 100-foot tall human figures, standing face to
face on a hill above the city, is incomplete: A giant hand that would
join the figures was never attached. The monument, built last year,
is now under threat of destruction," The Wall Street Journal reads.

"Small-minded people blocked the monument and they will block the peace
process too," says Naif Alibeyoglu, October 8 who had the statue built
when he was mayor of Kars. "You wait and see, [the deal] will end up
like my statue: a statue without hands," the WSJ goes.

"The statue was my call for peace," Alibeyoglu says. "Prejudices on
both sides are deep, because neither side knows the other. We needed
to break the ice," Eurasia Insight informs.

"Why is one figure standing with its head bowed, as if ashamed?" asks
Oktay Aktas, an ethnic Azeri and local head of the Nationalist Action
Party. In fact, the two figures are standing straight. But he insists
the monument is "an Armenian statue" representing Armenia reaching out
to embrace eastern Turkish lands that had a large Armenian minority
until 1915. "I said I would smash the statue down with my own hands,
and I will," Aktas adds, EI reads, Oct. 16.

According to the WSJ, "Kars would stand to benefit from the ability
to trade across a border 25 miles away by train and truck. But some
20% of the city’s population is ethnic Azerbaijanis, who consider
opening the border while Armenia remains in control of a fifth of
Azerbaijan’s territory a betrayal."

In November, Turkey’s Commission for Monuments ordered that the
Monument to Humanity be demolished.