The Economist, UK
Oct 10 2009
Bones to pick: Turkey and Armenia
DER ZOR, SYRIA
A new deal, but the old quarrels persist
THE bones protrude from the earth. An Armenian priest extracts them,
praying quietly. Syrian secret police in a green jeep look on.
Residents of Busayrah, a village 35km (22 miles) south-east of Der
Zor, claim the bones are of hundreds of thousands of Armenians marched
into the Syrian desert and slaughtered by Ottoman forces in 1915.
"Donkeys are now defecating on the bones of my forefathers. They were
not allowed dignity, not even in death," says Khatchig Mouradian, a
journalist.
Armenians say the mass extermination of their forebears was genocide.
Members of the Armenian diaspora believe that justice will not be done
until the world, and above all Turkey, accepts this. And that is why
many viscerally oppose a landmark deal between Turkey and its
landlocked neighbour, Armenia, due to be signed this weekend in
Switzerland.
Serzh Sargsyan, Armenia’s president, has been blasted by nationalist
opponents and greeted with howls of "traitor" by thousands of Armenian
protesters in France, America and Lebanon where he has
(unsuccessfully) lobbied the diaspora’s leaders for support. Websites
with names like "stoptheprotocols.com" abound.
The draft agreement calls for diplomatic ties and the reopening of
Armenia’s border with Turkey, sealed by the Turks in 1993 in
solidarity with their Azeri cousins after Armenia occupied chunks of
Azerbaijan following a nasty war over the mainly Armenian enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh. Diaspora Armenians are especially incensed by a plan
for a joint commission of historians to investigate the events leading
up to 1915. They fume that this calls the genocide into doubt and may
make it harder to seek compensation. Most historians agree that there
were as many as 1m Armenians living in Turkey before 1915, compared
with 60,000 today. Much of their wealth went to Muslim Turks.
William Schabas, a professor of human rights in Galway, Ireland, says
the 1915 killings constituted genocide. But he also argues that "there
is no solid legal precedent for a right to compensation with respect
to events that took place nearly a century ago." In Turkey, too, there
are deep misgivings about peace with Armenia. Opposition parties have
accused Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, of "carrying out
America’s orders" and "selling the country". They will fight the
agreement if it is put to a vote in parliament.
Mr Erdogan (whose ruling Justice and Development Party has a clear
majority in parliament) has made clear that Armenia needs to cede some
of the occupied territories around Nagorno-Karabakh before the
agreement can be approved. That is because Azerbaijan, which sells
large quantities of oil and gas to Turkey, threatens to turn to Russia
should Turkey abandon its cause. The Turks pin their hopes on a
meeting due soon between Mr Sargsyan and his Azeri counterpart, Ilham
Aliev, in Moldova. Mr Aliev claims that a deal is imminent. But Mr
Sargsyan has said that he won’t be "signing anything".
The concern for Turkey may then be that merely signing a deal with
Armenia without ratifying it will not be enough to stave off threats
by America’s Congress to pass a bill labelling the Armenian tragedy as
genocide. The past week’s events show that, even if Turkey and Armenia
shake hands, the diaspora will keep to its cause. But the question
Turkey should ask itself is how long it can evade the ghosts of its
bloody past.