ARMENIA: PRESIDENT SARGSYAN BLAMED FOR OBAMA AVOIDING THE G-WORD
Marianna Grigoryan
EurasiaNet
partments/insight/articles/eav042610.shtml
April 26 2010
NY
Many Armenians are blaming President Serzh Sargsyan’s decision to
freeze the reconciliation process with Turkey for US President Barack
Obama’s failure again this year to call Ottoman Turkey’s World War
I-era slaughter of ethnic Armenians an act of genocide.
Obama’s statement on April 24, the 95th anniversary of the 1915
slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million ethnic Armenians, differed little
from his comments in 2009. Treading gingerly, Obama declared that
"[t]he Meds Yeghern [Great Catastrophe] is a devastating chapter in
the history of the Armenian people, and we must keep its memory alive
in honor of those who were murdered and so that we do not repeat the
grave mistakes of the past."
For many Armenians, Obama’s comments fell short of expectations. An
Obama pledge to recognize the massacre as genocide, made back when he
was a presidential candidate, is still widely remembered by Armenians.
Ruben Safrastian, a prominent expert in Turkish studies and the
director of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of
Oriental Studies, was one of those who had hoped for much more from
Obama’s statement.
"Obama’s avoidance of the word ‘genocide’ is the result of bargaining
and an agreement with Turkey," Safrastian claimed.
Safrastian was unable to back his assertion with hard evidence. But
he and others base an assumption that Washington is leaning toward
Turkey on the fact that the White House did quietly urge a US House of
Representatives committee to drop a vote on a genocide-recognition
resolution, which was adopted in early March. US Secretary of
State Hillary Rodham Clinton termed the vote ill-suited for the
Armenian-Turkish rapprochement process – a comment often interpreted
in Yerevan as meaning that it was ill-suited for Turkey, a long-time
US military ally. [For background see EurasiaNet’s archive].
One prominent opposition politician contends that Obama’s omission
of the word "genocide" is the fault of President Serzh Sargsyan’s
government, which, on April 22, suspended parliamentary ratification
of the protocols on reconciliation with Turkey. [For background see
EurasiaNet’s archive].
"In fact, Yerevan caused this situation by its own moves,"
argued Stepan Safarian, leader of the opposition Heritage Party’s
parliamentary faction. "Serzh Sargsyan made a step that settled minor
problems, but damaged the process of international recognition of the
genocide." In response to the international community, the Armenian
government refrained from pressing Turkey on the genocide question
to give reconciliation a chance, Safarian said.
In a televised speech, Sargsyan stated that Armenia would move forward
with the normalization of relations "when we are convinced that there
is a proper environment in Turkey, and there is leadership in Ankara
ready to reengage in the normalization process."
Another Armenian analyst disputed the notion that Sargsyan’s
announcement significantly influenced Obama’s comments. The reality
of the Armenian-Turkish reconciliation process was that it had hit
an impasse at the outset of this year, and this snag had become
entangled with the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process, involving Yerevan
and Turkey’s strategic ally, Azerbaijan, asserted Manvel Sargsian,
a senior analyst at the Armenian Center for National and International
Studies. [For background see EurasiaNet’s archive].
"Negotiations with Turkey had come to a pretty difficult situation, and
the decision [i.e. suspending the reconciliation process] would’ve been
both logical [to the international community], as well as unexpected
for Turkey and Azerbaijan," Sargsian said. Sargsian added that Turkey
and Azerbaijan seemed to believe that Armenia is more eager to see
the Armenian-Turkish border reopened than, in fact, it is.
Reactions to President Sargsyan’s announcement from the three countries
mediating the Karabakh talks – the United States, Russia and France –
were relatively measured.
US Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip
Gordon commented on April 23 that US diplomats "continue to urge both
sides to keep the door open to pursuing efforts at reconciliation
and normalization." French President Nicolas Sarkozy made a similarly
neutral statement; Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has not officially
commented on the decision, but met with Sargsyan two days before the
ratification freeze was declared.
In the opinion of one of Armenia’s largest opposition blocs, Sargsyan’s
expression of willingness to continue with reconciliation only
underlines that the peacemaking with Turkey is over. "By suspending
the ratification process, on the one hand, and voicing readiness to
continue it, on the other hand, the regime, in fact, confesses it
has come to a dead-end," declared ex-President Levon Ter-Petrosian’s
Armenian National Congress.
By contrast, the nationalist Armenian Revolutionary
Federation-Dashnaktsutiun, which left Sargsyan’s governing coalition in
2009 in protest at the Turkish reconciliation policy, believes Sargsyan
should have gone a step further and removed Armenia’s signature from
the protocols. A law enacted earlier in 2010 enables the Armenian
government to revoke previously signed international treaties. [For
background see EurasiaNet’s archive].
Many Armenians interviewed during April 24 commemoration in Yerevan
expressed pessimism about the chances for reconciliation with Turkey.
Thirty-five-year-old programmer Hambarzum Mkrtchian offered one
of the few voices of dissent. Sargsyan’s speech about halting
ratification of the protocols was "quite difficult" to make in the
face of international and domestic reactions, said Mkrtchian. "I am
sure the process will go in the right direction. I trust him."
Some older Armenians expressed respect for Sargsyan’s attempt to
reconcile with Turkey, but showed little surprise that the process
had stalled over what they perceived as Ankara’s demand that Armenia
make concessions in the Karabakh peace process. "What could we expect
from Turkey other than preconditions?" asked retired 70-year-old
schoolteacher Angela Khalafian, whose parents left Turkey amidst the
Ottoman Turkish government’s crackdown on ethnic Armenians. "Doesn’t
our past teach us that we can’t walk in tandem with Turkey’s policies?
How could the Armenian authorities be so naive?"
Editor’s Note: Marianna Grigoryan is a freelance reporter based
in Yerevan.