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?"
Marianna Grigoryan is a freelance reporter based in Yerevan.
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