news.am, Armenia
March 26 2010

Today’s Zaman: The government’s room for maneuver has contracted considerably

16:44 / 03/26/2010Below is an article entitled `The Armenian issue in
the election year’ by Etyen Mahçupyan, Editor of the Agos newspaper,
published by Today’s Zaman.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an’s hinting at deporting 100,000
Armenians working illegally in Turkey has, interestingly, captured the
country’s attention immediately. The fact that his remarks amount to a
gaffe that leaves Turkey in a politically difficult position as we get
closer to April 24 has added to the media’s interest.

ErdoÄ?an gave an overblown figure for the number of Armenians working
illegally in Turkey, and this urged many people to wonder whether
these Armenians were being held hostage against the possibility of
foreign parliaments adopting bills recognizing the Armenian genocide.
Moreover, it was not rational for him to propose, as the prime
minister of a country that rejects genocide accusations, a measure
that recalls genocide. Not a single person believed that these illegal
Armenian workers might be sent back to their homeland. This belief
rests on the fact that humanitarian values now precede political
motivations in this issue.

The prime minister’s unfortunate remarks served as a litmus test that
brought to surface the change in Turkey. All media organizations
reported his remarks along with interviews with Armenians. All human
rights associations condemned ErdoÄ?an, and perhaps as a more important
indication, Muslim readers sent messages protesting or criticizing
him. This incident indicates once again the risks before the Justice
and Development Party (AK Party). Today, the AK Party does not face
serious competition in the political spectrum, but its supporting
demographic are freeing themselves more quickly from the party. While
the AK Party is still forced to maintain its coalition with
nationalism, a dynamic group of its supporters, accounting for about
10 percent of its total vote, consisting mainly of young people in
cities and gradually increasing in number, is significantly ahead of
the AK Party’s management in terms of human rights and democratic
criteria. We will possibly see the outcome of the pressure from this
group on the party’s management in the next election. If it can
establish a single-party government, we can predict that more `young
devout people’ will find a place within the AK Party government and we
will see a more reformist and more pro-European Union government.

Therefore, we will spend the year to come with the reform moves
intended to smooth out the legal framework of the coming term, but we
will probably not see major moves in the political sphere. However,
the expectations for reforms in the political sphere will continue to
mount each day. As the tension between reality and expectations will
affect the AK Party’s election performance to a great extent, we will
witness draft reforms being reconsidered as we near the election
period.

The relations with Armenia seem to be trapped within this general
political environment. In other words, it would be realistic to assume
that the steps toward the opening of the common border between Turkey
and Armenia will be postponed for at least one year. Yet this is a
long stretch of time, and if Turkey spends this period without doing
anything, this would imply that its claim of having good relations
with its neighbors is false, further adding to anti-Turkish sentiments
in Western countries. For this reason, it wouldn’t be a surprise if
Turkey launched a civil society initiative geared toward Armenia.

However, this effort does not guarantee that parliaments of Western
countries will stop adopting genocide bills. Turkey must pursue a more
realistic policy. Western parliaments’ adoption of resolutions
concerning a historic incident that occurred in another territory may
be flawed from a legitimacy perspective, but it is obvious that the
main cause of this is Turkey’s policy of intentional indifference and
denial for the last 90 years. By adopting genocide resolutions,
Western parliaments are acting in an illegitimate manner from a
political perspective, but they are quite justified from a
psychological standpoint.

The more Turkey insistently refuses to accept the realities that
occurred during and after 1915, the higher the likelihood that the
world will call these incidents `genocide.’ If, in addition to this
policy of denial, Turkey shows extraordinary resistance to returning
the properties that belonged to the foundations of non-Muslim
minorities, this possibility of attaching the `genocide’ label to the
incidents will increase further. This is because the story of 1915 and
its aftermath is not only one of the people who were displaced or
killed, but also one of a community whose cultural assets and
properties were usurped. Turkey not only refuses to carry the burden
of the dead people, but also continues to hold a handful of their
properties as spoils. This inevitably adds credence to the
genocide-still-continues discourse.

Then the prime minister talks about sending back 100,000 Armenian
workers. A diplomatic blunder, his remarks are possibly an indication
of a block. There is a general congestion in how Turkey sees the
Armenian community, Armenia and the genocide issue. The government’s
room for maneuver has contracted considerably. In theory, two options
may be tried. But the option to adopt more nationalistic discourse is
not very likely as it is getting harder for Muslim groups to accept
it. So we are left with the initiative policy as an extension of a
more democratic perspective. Unfortunately, we have to wait at least
one year for this policy.