DAVUTOGLU SPEAKS IN LONDON
By Tatevik Grigorian

Noyan Tapan
13.01.2010
London

In his recent lecture at King’s College London, HE Ahmet Davutoglu
addressed the issue of Turkey’s potential membership in the European
Union and its particularly thriving relationship with Britain. In
a presentation entitled ‘Converging Interests of Turkey & the UK in
an Enlarged EU & Beyond’, Dr. Davutoglu addressed a number if issues
Turkey currently faces, among others the Cyprus issue and the newly
established relationship with Armenia. Dr. Davutoglu assured his
audience that in the past 7 years Turkey had greatly improved its
relations with all its neighours. It had abolished the visa regime
with 8 of its neighbours, it offered new proposals for resolving the
Cyprus question and it has signed protocols with Armenia to normalise
relations.

The lecture was followed by a question and answer session, where Dr.

Davutoglu answered merely 3 questions from the audience with tens of
enthusiastic hands waving for the right to speak. Among the lucky
three was the representative of the Forum of Armenian Associations
of Europe, Ms Tatevik Grigorian who addressed two questions to Dr.

Davutoglu. The first question referred to the improvement of relations
with Turkey’s neighbours, in particular with Armenia. Ms. Grigorian
asked whether the Turkish Parliament was prepared to ratify the
protocols without any preconditions and thus honour the original
agreement. In her second question, Ms Grigorian asked Dr. Davutoglu
whether he believed that Turkey was ready to join the EU and uphold
the same standard of human rights, such as the right to freedom of
expression, when Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code simply makes
this impossible. She drew the audience’s attention to the high-profile
case of the nobel prize author Orhan Pamuk, who was tried for vaguely
mentioning the Armenian Genocide in an interview. Would Turkey abolish
Article 301?

Dr. Davutoglu answered the second question first, gently mocking
Ms Grigorian to ‘update her knowledge’ and suggesting that she was
unaware that Article 301 had been abolished three years ago. Whilst
he was right to state that Orhan Pamuk’s case was dropped in the end,
it is not true that Article 301 has been abolished. It is in fact
still in use, but with amendments since April 30, 2008, which lower
the maximum sentence from three years to two; require the approval
of the Minister o Justice, etc. But the fact remains that Article
301 has not been abolished, yet the Minister suggested that it had
been and thus brushed off the question, moving onto the other.

In response to the former question, Dr. Davutoglu emphasised that what
Armenia calls ‘preconditions’ are not in fact preconditions and should
not be viewed that way. He explained that in order for the peace to
be sustainable in the South Caucasus, it was simply impossible to
improve relations with Armenia before Armenia returned ‘righteously
Azeri land to Azerbaijan’. He stated that 20% of Azeri land was under
Armenian military control so how could there be talks of normalised
relations if this was still the case? How could he possibly convince
his ministers in the Parliament to ratify the protocols under these
conditions? Dr. Davutoglu concluded by saying that he dreamt that one
day one could safely drive all the way from Baku through Karabagh,
Yerevan, Nakhichevan, down to Kars