WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CLOSING OF TURKISH-ARMENIAN BORDER

Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey
Feb 5 2015

Maxime Gauin

A growing campaign, inside and outside Turkey, is advocating the
opening of the Turkish-Armenian border, without asking anything of
Armenia, as if the Turkish government was the only, or at least the
main, actor responsible for the current situation. To understand the
real causes of blockade, we can begin with two recent events. This,
month, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan invited his Armenian counterpart
to the centennial of the Canakkale (Gallipoli) battle. Mr. Serge
Sarkisian answered negatively. After all, he had the right to refuse,
but his letter was unsophisticated and aggressive. He stressed the
Armenian sufferings only.

Yet, nobody can expect the vast majority of the Turks to deny the
very existence of the war crimes committed by Armenian volunteers
of the Russian army, crimes that begin months before the forced
relocation of 1915-16, as proven by complaints of Russian officers
and even verdicts of Russian martial courts. Mr. Sarkisian also used
more than questionable arguments, such as the misleading memoirs of
Sarkis Torossian, submitted years ago to a devastating analysis, even
by Turkish historians who are notoriously critical of the traditional
stance of Turkey on the Armenian issue (a detailed rebuttal was written
by Hakan Yavuz in Daily Sabah). Nobody can expect being taken seriously
by using debunked hoaxes.

Another incident, much less covered by media, was the visit of
Hasan Cemal in Yerevan. In spite of his acceptance of the “Armenian
genocide” label, Mr. Cemal was vehemently attacked by the audience,
because he called ASALA terrorists, who planted bombs in Orly and
Esenboga airports, and because he called the occupation of western
Azerbaijan by Armenia since 1992-94 an occupation. The audience
was surprised: Indeed, at the request of the Hrant Dink Foundation,
the Armenian translator had suppressed these parts of the book. Even
extreme nationalists of the diaspora, such as the former spokesman
of the ASALA in France, Jean-Marc “Ara” Toranian, did not dare to
attack Mr. Cemal – far from that. Armenian nationalists did.

The reason is actually simple. In western democratic countries,
nationalists have to care about their image – even more after the
trials won against some of them in France, and after I sued Mr.

Toranian himself for defamation last year. In Armenia, they do not care
at all. In 1998, the “moderate” President Levon Ter-Petrossian asked
Jacques Chirac for a presidential pardon for the main perpetrator of
the Orly attack, Varoujan Garabidjian. After Mr.

Garabidjian was released in 2001 by a court decision, he was welcomed
as a national hero by the prime minister and by the mayor of Yerevan –
just try to imagine the reactions in the world if an Islamist terrorist
was welcomed by the prime minister in a Muslim country. Even more
concerning, the Republican Party in power in Armenia openly claims
they find inspiration in the writings of Garegin Nzhdeh, who, after
having practiced ethnic cleansing of the Azeris (1918-1920) and
theorized (during the 1930s) a “religion of race,” went to Germany at
the beginning of the World War II and was a member of the Armenian
National Council established in Berlin in 1942. In February 2013,
Nzhdeh was celebrated in Yerevan State University, the place where Mr.

Cemal was attacked, and last year, the municipal council of Yerevan
decided to unveil a new statue of this Nazi.

According to Armenian media, such as armenianow.com, there was
certainly a controversy, including in the municipal council, but
about the place for the statue. To put the problem very directly,
a society where the only apparent debate on the statute of a Nazi
war criminal is a dispute about its location is not a society ready
to make peace with her neighbors.

So, you are warned: the Turks are requested to open the border
without pre-conditions, namely to say nothing about the territorial
claims included in the Armenian Constitution, to stop any support to
its main regional ally, Azerbaijan, whose percent of the territory
is occupied by Armenia, and not to worry about the celebration of
anti-Turkish terrorists and Nazis in Yerevan. It would be interesting
if the proponents of this solution clearly explained how peaceful,
democratic and realistic it is.

*Maxime Gauin is a researcher at the Center for Eurasian Studies
(AVIM) and a PhD candidate at the Middle East Technical University
history department.

February/05/2015