A STEP BACKWARDS IN TURKISH-ARMENIAN RELATIONS
NAIRA MELKMYAN

Lexington Herald Leader
a-step-backwards-in-turkish-armenian.html
May 3 2010
Kentucky

The Institute for War & Peace Reporting YEREVAN, Armenia — Armenian
President Serzh Sargsyan has halted the peace process with neighboring
Turkey, and accused Ankara of trying to insert fresh conditions into
an agreement that they reached last year.

"For a whole year, there has been no lack of high-ranking Turkish
officials expressing prior conditions in public speeches. For a
whole year, Turkey has done all it can to waste time, and to break
the process," he said.

"We want to keep the possibility of a normalization of our mutual
relations, since we want peace. Our political goal of a normalization
of Armenian-Turkish relations remains in force," he added.

But for now, the president has halted efforts to win parliamentary
approval of measures that would establish ties between the two
countries.

Analysts noted that Sargsyan made his comments on April 22, just two
days before the day on which Armenians around the world commemorate the
killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey in 1915. Armenians worldwide
have long been lobbying to have the deaths regarded as genocide,
a characterization hotly contested by Turkey.

While expressing their disappointment, both Russia and the United
States, which have been pushing both parties to normalize relations,
welcomed the fact that Sargsyan had not withdrawn from the process
entirely.

It’s been two years since the leaders of the two countries first met
and began the process they hoped would eventually lead to the opening
of the borders between Armenia and Turkey and the establishment of
diplomatic relations.

But Armenia’s policy of trying to secure international recognition of
the Ottoman killings as genocide continues to anger Turkey. Armenia,
on the other hand, is upset that Ankara is an ally of Azerbaijan,
Armenia’s rival in the conflict over Nagorny Karabakh.

Analysts in Armenia said the president’s statement merely reflected
the obvious.

"The process was frozen before," said Alexander Iskandaryan, director
of the Kavkaz Institute.

Turkey has yet to respond to the president’s statement.

"We are evaluating the content of this statement and what it means"
legally and politically, Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Burak
Ozugergin told Agence France-Presse.

But Yusuf Kanli a columnist for the Hurriyet Daily News in Turkey,
blamed the lack of progress squarely on Armenia.

"Armenia’s move to start the process of ratifying the protocols was
a cunning political move designed to corner Turkey," he said. "The
present decision of the Armenian coalition government to halt the
parliamentary ratification process is a political decision conceding
that the earlier move has failed."

Observers in Moscow said opposition parties probably forced the
Armenian president to halt parliamentary action.

"The problem is that in Armenia, restoring relations with Turkey
is not very popular," said Sergei Markov, a member of the Russian
parliament and a political analyst.

"Many people think that here Armenia is losing its honor, and that it
is effectively agreeing with the fact that Turkey does not recognize
the genocide in exchange for opening its borders."

ABOUT THE WRITER

Naira Melkmyan is a reporter in Armenia who writes for The Institute
for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization that trains
journalists in areas of conflict. Readers may write to the author at
the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, 48 Grays Inn Road, London
WC1X 8LT, U.K.; Web site: For information about IWPR’s
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