Armenia Frustrated as Ties With Turkey Remain Strained

Hopes for a rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey are fading, underscored by Armenian President Robert Kocharian's recent decision not to attend the late June NATO summit in Istanbul. Despite a flurry of diplomatic activity, Armenian officials say "no considerable progress" towards normalization has been made over the past year.

For the last decade, Turkey has effectively linked the normalization of Ankara-Yerevan ties with resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In mid 2003, Turkish officials first hinted that they were willing to consider decoupling the two issues, while raising the possibility that the Armenian-Turkish border could be reopened. Turkey sealed the frontier in 1993 – at the height of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Karabakh – as an act of solidarity with Baku. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Turkey's effort to open the border prompted an immediate and prolonged outcry from Azerbaijani officials, prompting Ankara to retreat. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Baku argued that if Turkey opened its frontier with Armenia to trade, it would remove a vital incentive for Yerevan to make concessions in the Karabakh peace process, which at present is stalemated. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Economic experts say an open Armenian-Turkish frontier would substantially reduce the transportation costs in Armenia's export/import operations, and make the country more attractive for potential foreign investors. According to a 2003 World Bank study, the border opening alone could boost Armenia's GDP by 30 percent.

Now, Armenian officials aren't expecting to see the border reopened soon. "Unfortunately, the Turks have lacked the will to separate relations with Armenia from their alliance with Azerbaijan," one well-informed source told EurasiaNet. "As long as they stick to that policy serious progress in Turkish-Armenian relations will be impossible."

Armenia expressed its displeasure via the announcement that Kocharian would skip the NATO summit. The decision was widely applauded in Yerevan.

Just last June, there existed mounting optimism concerning Armenian-Turkish relations. Turkey itself raised hopes for normalization when the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan began sending signals about the reopening the border. In a policy speech, Erdogan made no mention of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Karabakh as he spoke about obstacles to normalizing ties with Armenia. He instead complained about Yerevan's continuing campaign for international recognition of the 1915-1922 slaughter of some 1.5 Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide. Turkey vehemently denies that the mass killings and deportations constituted genocide.

The change of rhetoric was welcomed by Yerevan and was followed by three meetings between the Armenian and Turkish foreign ministers in June, September and December 2003. Armenia's Vartan Oskanian emerged from the talks with cautiously optimistic statements. Other Armenian sources involved in the dialogue claimed that Ankara has decided in principle to lift the blockade before establishing diplomatic relations with Yerevan. Ironically, some of them suggested that the Turkish government might announce the ground-breaking development during the NATO summit in Istanbul.

In mid-2003, regional and Western observers said Turkey's shift on the Armenian border issue could reflect positively on Turkey's long-standing bid to join the European Union. Of late, however, Ankara's efforts to obtain a date for the start of EU accession talks have been damaged by strong French opposition.

For the time being, it seems that the status quo in Armenian-Turkish relations will hold. Indeed, the speaker of the Turkish parliament, Bulent Arinc, was quoted by the official Anatolia news agency as telling his Armenian counterpart Artur Baghdasarian in Strasbourg on May 19 that his country still wants Armenia to take "positive steps to settle the Karabakh problem" before making any overtures.

But some observers believe that not much should be read into such statements. According to Van Krikorian, a prominent Armenian-American activist and a member of the US-sponsored Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC), the reopening of the border this year remains "more than possible." [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archive].

"The technical evaluations are done, the international community supports it, and both the Turkish and Armenian people, including opponents, are ready for it," Krikorian said. "The real question is on what terms it should occur."

"Azerbaijan is clearly, and can be, an obstacle to the border opening, but not an insurmountable obstacle if Turkey continues on its current path," he added.