TURKISH LEADERSHIP DOES ITS BEST FOR INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE TO BE ON THE INCREASE
Karine Ter-Sahakyan

PanARMENIAN.Net –
April 6, 2010 AMT

If Kazakhstan, Iran, Russia, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan finally agree
on the partition of the Caspian Sea, Aliyev will lose his last trump.

Turkish diplomacy that has successfully maneuvered between East and
West for the last 70 years has now found itself in an unfavorable
situation, when neither blackmail nor flirtations help. But the reason
is not the persistence of the corrupt policy of denying the Armenian
Genocide or the threats of Western civilization. It turns out that
Turkey, yielding to the persuasions of Heydar Aliyev, who advanced
the slogan "One Nation, Two States", took on her own shoulders the
excessive burden of promoting the interests of Azerbaijan whenever
a defeat was obviously inevitable.

The fact that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was not invited to
the Global Summit on Nuclear Safety is rather a symbolic phenomenon,
no matter what interpretations are given in Baku on this regard. It
is apparent that neither Turkey nor Armenia, let alone Georgia are
nuclear powers, but they received an invitation from the President of
the United States, while Azerbaijan with its advertised hydrocarbon
reserves remained "on her own". Most apparently, neither will the
Nabucco project be realized, but even if it is, it won’t be the
way Aliyev dreams but the way the U.S. and Europe like it. In this
regard Turkey realistically measures what is happening in the region
and openly says she will not participate in the project, the more so
because there is no money yet. One can predict what Obama will offer
Erdogan and Sargsyan in exchange for ratification of the Protocols.

But the U.S. president, in our opinion, has left out of account one
important detail: Turkey has someplace to step back, Armenia has not.

Erdogan may refuse to support Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict, but the President of Armenia cannot renounce the process
of international recognition of the Armenian Genocide, because this
process is not in his hands. Neither is it possible to make Armenia
give up the Diaspora, not to mention Karabakh. But if the Turkish
Premier agrees to stand aside in the issue of the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict (and everything is coming to this, despite the tone of the
Azerbaijani media), the President of Armenia will hold the cards.

Baku now has only a little chance to reclaim the attention of the
international community, which, however, would be very dangerous for
the Aliyev clan. In order to achieve this, she "just" has to shift
from threats to business and try to launch a war. What will follow is
easy to guess: Turkey and Iran will immediately dissociate themselves
from their inadequate neighbor; the world powers will watch the
"valiant Azerbaijani army" suffering losses and will intervene only
when they see that continuation of the war is directed against their
own interests. In short, the situation of 1993-94 will repeat itself,
when promotion of the Karabakh army was stopped for it was already
"a squeezed orange". But it’s not only about the war or about the
attempts to start it. Another Sword of Damocles hanging over Baku
is the Caspian status. It is common knowledge that the oil which
the Aliyev clan is so persistently trying to pass off as their own,
in fact lies in the Turkmen and Iranian sites. And if Kazakhstan,
Iran, Russia, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan finally agree on partition
of the Caspian Sea, Aliyev will then finally lose his last trump.

Meanwhile, Erdogan is once again trying to assure his "brothers"
that he will not leave them in trouble, Davutoglu is going to meet
the Armenian Diaspora, and the President of Armenia is preparing for
a visit to the USA. Everyone is busy with their own job. And it is
of absolutely no importance whether Barack Obama will utter the word
‘genocide’ in his annual April 24 address to the Armenian Americans.

It can change nothing, since the current Turkish leadership has done
its best to ensure that international recognition of the Armenian
Genocide is on the increase. This can be recorded in the archive of
Turkish diplomacy, which, like a sly fox, has been caught into a trap
with all paws.