IF NOT BY TURKEY AND ARMENIA, THE PROTOCOLS COULD BE SIGNED BY ANY OTHER COUNTRY
Karine Ter-Sahakyan
PanARMENIAN.Net
27.10.2009 GMT+04:00
Is Armenia ready to appear in the eyes of the world community a nation,
doubting the slaughter of half a million of her countrymen?
The Armenian nation has an extremely unpleasant trait of character;
we believe that everyone owes us and, accordingly we shape our foreign
policy on this premise. And because the premise is actually false, the
entire foreign policy goes beyond ordinary logic. The latest bright
example is the Armenian-Turkish Protocols, which caused nothing but
disapproval. Objections to the Protocols themselves are not many:
common documents, which could be signed between any two countries,
if these countries were not Turkey and Armenia.
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ It so happened that Armenia is geographically doomed
to live with a sworn "friend". There is no other choice. But instead
of trying to somehow neutralize the present and future challenges,
we find comfort in illusions like: Ankara does not want to remain
hostage to Baku any longer; Ankara makes pro-Azerbaijani statements
for internal use, etc. Perhaps it is in fact so, but the logic of the
recent developments in the region shows quite the opposite, namely:
all the official statements made by Turkish high-ranking government
officials are aimed precisely at Yerevan to quiet down the Armenians,
and then strike a blow, which may not be so bloody as in 1915 but
will be as merciless as that one. It was on the eve of April 24,
1915 that the Young Turks assured the Armenian MPs that they and the
whole nation were not in danger. And the Armenians believed… Will
we believe them now too and find ourselves in a similar situation,
which we’ll not be able to control? For some reason Armenia does not
attach much importance to the statements of the Senators and U.S.
Congressmen, who speak of the inadmissibility of establishing a joint
commission. But Sen. Robert Menendez and Adam Schiff very well know
what they say.
Last time we spoke of the negative impact the ill-fated clause on the
"establishment of a historical commission" had on the western media.
But the situation is much more serious. Endangered is the activity
of the Armenian lobby, which, according to most of the analysts in
Washington, is surpassed in strength and influence only by the Israeli
and Indian lobbies. In the article "Diplomacy, Inc.", published in
the magazine Foreign Affairs, Senior Fellow at the World Security
Institute John Newhouse in particular writes: "The Armenian lobby is
built on a strong domestic ethnic base in the United States and is
committed to having Turkey publicly condemned for genocide, relating
to the slaughter of Armenians that occurred in 1915. Intense lobbying
for a congressional resolution accusing Turkey of genocide began
in the 1980s and has since become a perennial question. Most years,
the White House and the State Department support the principle behind
such a resolution but ultimately conclude that adoption of a resolution
of that kind against the Turks would be harmful to U.S. interests.
Passing the resolution could have meant the end of efforts to build a
reliable and productive U.S.-Turkish relationship. And it could have
strengthened Turkey’s incentive to hedge against its weakening position
in the West and the rising instability in western Asia by initiating
a nuclear weapons program. In early 2009, however, the genocide
resolution prospects rose sharply. As reported in the Financial Times,
the public denunciation by the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, of Israel’s Gaza offensive last January, angered many of the
Jewish American and pro-Israel groups that had supported Turkey behind
the scenes during the debate over the genocide resolution in 2007.
The Armenian government spends virtually nothing on lobbying services
in Washington, because it does not need to: the Armenian community in
the United States, concentrated in California, Maryland, Massachusetts,
New Jersey, and the New York area, promotes Armenian causes through
financial contributions and its influence on Capitol Hill. The
Armenian lobby in the United States is surpassed in strength and
influence only by the Israeli lobby and the Indian lobby.
The Turkish government, on the other hand, measures the success of its
heavy spending on lobbying in Washington by Congress’ unwillingness,
thus far, to adopt a resolution on the Armenian Genocide. In
Washington, the executive branch has traditionally supported Turkey
as a bulwark of NATO, with the core of the U.S.-Turkish relationship
based on military assistance. Turkey is also a major procurer of U.S.
military hardware, which has led Lockheed Martin and other major arms
suppliers to spend a lot of money supporting the Turkish Government."
This long citation once again confirms the idea that any power, be it
the United States, Russia or the EU countries, does not want to have a
headache in the form of Armenia, which, alas, over the past 200 years
has not realized that she is fed exclusively by promises. However,
it is quite clear that we cannot pretend to more. We ourselves have
developed this opinion about our nation and it cannot be changed
overnight.
The signing of such protocols in Zurich accurately fits the model of
the Armenian behavior. It is incomprehensible why the lance is broken,
because we already experienced this in 1920, 1923, and earlier in 1861
in Berlin. Perhaps, the wave of "public anger" was not so strong then,
because of the absence of central authority, but the essence is the
same – nothing changes. The question is whether Armenia is ready to
appear in the eyes of the world community as a nation, doubting the
slaughter of half a million of her countrymen in the Ottoman Empire
in 1915…