BAKU SUPPORT FOR US ‘GENOCIDE’ MEASURE QUESTIONED
Fulya Ozerkan

Hurriyet
March 8 2010
Turkey

A supporter of the Armenian ‘genocide’ resolution waits for the House
panel vote results. The Committee on Foreign Affairs endorsed the
resolution 23 to 22.

Although solidarity with Azerbaijan has led Turkey to tie the approval
of the Armenian protocols to progress on Karabakh, there are questions
as to whether Baku sufficiently opposed a recent Armenian "genocide"
resolution in the U.S. Congress.

A key partner in U.S.- and EU-backed energy projects in the Caspian
Sea, Azerbaijan is a close ally of Turkey and has been locked in a
frozen conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani
territory that has been occupied by Armenia since 1993.

"The Azerbaijani calls for boycott campaigns in April-May 2009
were designed and conducted in a highly professional way. They have
also been developing their public diplomacy toward Washington and
Brussels on issues related to the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh,"
Burcu Gultekin Punsmann, senior foreign policy analyst at the Turkish
think-tank TEPAV, told the Hurriyet Daily News in an interview.

"Interestingly, however, pro-Azerbaijani advocacy groups kept silent
before the process that led to the March 4 vote in the U.S.," she said.

A U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee headed by deputy Howard Berman
narrowly passed a non-binding resolution on Thursday labeling the
World War I-era killings of Ottoman Armenians as "genocide." With
the passage of the bill, the door is now open to a full House vote.

Reacting against the resolution, Turkey said the vote not only risked
slowing down the normalization efforts with Armenia, but also risked
bringing them to a complete halt.

‘Not realistic to expect more’

One expert said Azerbaijan had been silent on the issue despite
Turkey’s anger at the resolution. "Azerbaijan failed to make its voice
heard strongly in opposing the genocide resolution," said Kamer Kasım,
Caucasus expert at Turkish think tank USAK.

"The Turkish-Armenian protocols led to a serious disappointment in
Azerbaijan and the likelihood of the opening of the sealed border
between Ankara and Yerevan created question marks in Baku despite
assurances from the Turkish government that the border would not be
opened unless a solution is found to the Nagorno-Karabakh problem,"
he said.

Turkish and Azerbaijani interests overlap in their opposition to the
Armenian lobby in the U.S., Kasım said, but wondered whether the
Azerbaijani lobby in the U.S. had made much of an effort to display
solidarity with Ankara in attempting to block the resolution, other
than a written condemnation.

"But it would not be realistic to expect much more than that from
Baku," he said.

One day after the vote, Azerbaijan slammed the resolution, saying the
move could damage U.S. interests in the Caspian country. Baku has
backed Turkey’s rejection of the "genocide" label and accused the
international community of remaining indifferent to the atrocities
committed by Armenian forces during the Karabakh conflict.

It also called on Turkey not to move ahead with normalization efforts
with Armenia until the Karabakh dispute is resolved.

Turkey and Armenia first announced a road map to normalization last
April before signing two protocols in October 2009 that called for
the establishment of diplomatic relations yet the process has become
mired with both countries blaming each other for the slowdown.

‘Fast learning process’

Azerbaijani reactions in the wake of the Turkish-Armenian
reconciliation process showed that Azerbaijani society, both
domestically and in the diaspora, had reached a good organizational
capacity and developed efficient advocacy methods, according to
Punsmann. "The learning process has been quite fast."

Despite this, Azerbaijani opposition to the subsequent genocide
resolutions was only tepid, according to the analysts.

"We couldn’t feel any tangible support for Turkey from Azerbaijan in
the period up until 2005," veteran Turkish diplomat Faruk Logoglu,
a former ambassador to Washington and Baku, told the Daily News.

In commenting on the present situation, Logoglu, said: "It is clear
that the protocols have not created a positive effect. There is an
Azerbaijani lobby in the U.S. but I have no idea to what extent they
are influential."

‘Genocide issue not purely Turkish-Armenian problem’

According to Punsmann, Azerbaijan has suffered from Turkish-Armenian
disputes as much as Turkey has suffered from Armenian-Azerbaijani
conflict.

"Even if one could have expected some solidarity from Azerbaijani
society at large, the idea that the genocide issue is purely a
Turkish-Armenian issue doesn’t seem irrelevant. Turkey’s policy in the
South Caucasus suffers from the consequences of the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict, merely a bilateral Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict. I would
argue that Azerbaijan has also been affected, especially during the
war over Nagorno-Karabakh, by the consequence of the century-old
historical dispute between Turkey and Armenia," she said.

"Interestingly, in the Armenian language, the term ‘Turk’ applies
to both Azeris and citizens of the Turkish Republic. Therefore the
start of a normalization process between Turkey and Armenia has the
potential to positively affect the conflict-settlement process between
Armenians and Azerbaijanis," she said.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress