Olive Branches from Ankara Raise Hopes and Challenges in Armenia

Armenian leaders, after two disputed elections, are now divided over how to receive recent overtures from Turkey. One camp doubts that Armenia's most powerful neighbor really intends to normalize relations. Another group has expressed concern that Turkey does want to end the status quo, potentially causing trouble between Yerevan and the worldwide Armenian community known as the Diaspora.

The dilemma materialized in May, when Armenian officials responded to reports that Abdullah Gul, Turkey's foreign minister, had commented to the Turkish media about his government's desire to achieve full relations with Armenia's. Gul then met with his Armenian counterpart Vartan Oskanian in Madrid on June 4 and said that the two would address reconciliation "with renewed energy."

This tone counters mistrust stemming from the breakdown of the Soviet Union in late 1991. Turkey and Armenia never established diplomatic relations, largely because Turkey strongly supported Azerbaijan in the war over Nagorno-Karabakh. (Turks and Azeris have a long history of ethnic kinship.) In April 1993, Ankara blocked the Armenian-Turkish border in response to Nagorno-Karabakh troops' occupation of Azerbaijan's Kelbajar region. Turkey lifted an air blockade a year later, implying that the blockade had damaged its own economy. But it never considered further normalization, unless Armenia first agreed to a "liberation of the Azeri territories." Now, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems interested in getting the border open, potentially as a precursor to full relations.

However, some Armenian politicians suspect that Gul's statement serves a separate agenda. Turkey keenly wants to join the European Union, which means it wants to avoid any appearance of intransigence toward its neighbors. [For background, see the Eurasia Insight archives]. European nations are watching Turkey's posture toward Armenia closely: Paris, in April, unveiled a monument to Komitas, the famous Armenian composer, who was a victim of the 1915 massacres of Armenians in Turkey. At the time, Gul asked French officials to avoid the term "genocide" in recalling the deaths, despite the fact that the French parliament had officially termed these events as "genocide" two years earlier. The Irish parliament on June 14 urged Turkey to "promote good neighborliness" with Armenia as part of a resolution praising Ankara's progress toward European Union membership. Gul's remarks reportedly contained no indication on Azerbaijan, implying that Ankara was seriously considering modifying its policy to suit European and American desires.

Given this possible ulterior motive, members of the Armenian Diaspora and some politicians balked at the idea of instant reconciliation. [For background on the Diaspora, see the Eurasia Insight archives]. Armen Rustamian, chairman of the parliamentary commission on foreign relations, has conditioned diplomatic ties on Turkish "neutrality" regarding Nagorno-Karabakh and on recognition that the 1915 tragedy was an act of genocide. "The opening of borders does not yet mean the establishment of full-scale relations," he told
the Noyan-Tapan news agency on June 12. His suspicion spread far and wide: the liberal daily Azg ran a June 12 story rendering the Oskanian-Gul meeting an "illusion of progress." And ethnic Armenians worldwide, by invoking the genocide issue, could make Gul's overtures more likely to stall.

Turkey has always rejected the claim that its troops perpetrated genocide on Armenians. [For background, see the Eurasia Insight archives]. Now, a draft of a ceremonial bill awaits consideration by both houses of the US Congress. The document lists the "Armenian genocide" among those genocides worth commemorating by the United Nations, contradicting Turkey's interpretation of history. The traditionalist Armenian Revolutionary Federation Dashnaktsutiun (ARF), which ruled the First Armenian Republic of 1918-20 and has won a role in Armenia's new coalition government, has argued that Turkey's current activities are simply "tricks" aimed at preventing this resolution. "They want to use