TURKEY AND ARMENIA: GENOCIDAL FOLLIES
The Economist, UK
Oct 4 2007
The trouble that might flow from an American congressional resolution
A RECENT evening in Istanbul, Turkey’s (and Europe’s) biggest city.
Armenia’s leading musician, Djivan Gasparyan, is playing his duduk,
an Anatolian-style clarinet, as Yavuz Bingol, an ethnic Kurd, belts
out Turkish folksongs. The event symbolises a budding rapprochement
between ordinary Turks and Armenians. But America’s Congress may now
torpedo this fragile process by voting for a bill calling the mass
slaughter of up to 1m Ottoman Armenians in 1915 a genocide.
Turkey has squashed previous attempts to pass such a bill by
exploiting its strategic significance and its clout as NATO’s
only Muslim member. This time officials fret that not only will a
congressional committee approve the resolution but also it may pass
on the House floor. Turkey says that this would plunge relations with
America into deep crisis. "Placing the Turks in the same category as
Nazis is intolerable for us," says one official.
Possible retaliatory measures might include denying the Americans
the use of the Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey, which is a hub
for the supply of non-combat materiel for American troops in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Turkey could also seal its land border with Iraq. With
positive Turkish views of America at a low of only 11%, according to
a recent German Marshall Fund poll, such moves might give nationalists
in Turkey a big boost.
Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, whose Californian district includes
many rich Armenians, is unswayed by pleas to back down. Eight former
secretaries of state have written to her to argue that, besides
endangering "our national security interests", the bill would kill
"some hopeful signs already that both parties are engaging each
other". Vartan Oskanian, Armenia’s foreign minister, retorts
that "expressing concern about a process that doesn’t exist is
disingenuous". His own recent meeting with his Turkish counterpart,
Ali Babacan, in New York got nowhere.
Turkey has no diplomatic ties with Armenia and refuses to open its
border with the landlocked ex-Soviet republic. This was sealed in
1993 after Armenia occupied a chunk of Azerbaijan in a vicious little
war. Air links have been restored, however, and recently Turkish
diplomats have hinted at a more dramatic move: formalising ties,
over the objections of a vocal Azeri lobby in Turkey, not to mention
those of its hawkish generals. In exchange Armenia would have to
recognise its border with Turkey and make some conciliatory gesture
towards Azerbaijan.
Armenia counters that it wants to restore relations "without
preconditions". That is because of a widespread suspicion that Turkey
is feigning change merely to derail the genocide resolution. If Turkey
were sincere, say the Armenians, it would scrap article 301 of the
penal code, under which intellectuals have been prosecuted for daring
to call the Armenian tragedy a genocide. On October 3rd Turkey’s new
president, Abdullah Gul, duly called for changes to article 301 in
a speech to the Council of Europe.
Turks claim that they want to delink the issues. As one official
puts it, "we strongly believe in decoupling our ties with Armenia
from the genocide bill and feel that over time the relationship will
flourish on its own merits." Should the bill be adopted in Congress,
though, a change in policy would become impossible because of the
nationalist passions it would stoke. These worries are shared by
Turkey’s Armenians, still reeling from the murder in January of an
ethnic Armenian newspaper editor, Hrant Dink. Mr Dink’s lawyers claim
that the nationalist teenager who shot him was acting under orders
from rogue elements within the security forces.
David Shahnazarian, a former chief of Armenia’s National Security
Council, complains that Western countries are using the genocide
issue to promote their own agenda. "In the case of France, it is
to keep Turkey out of the EU," he says. The massacre of a million
civilians is a matter in which Turks should arrive at the truth on
their own. But as Mr Gul has partly conceded, that may necessitate
an end to article 301’s restrictions on free speech.
playstory.cfm?story_id=9910136