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The Washington Diplomat
July, 2006
Turkey, Looking to Future,
Battles Its Past With Armenia
by Sanjay Talwani
Most nations involved in conflicts try to remain forward-looking. But
for Turkey, the recurring 90-year-old question of what happened in
Armenia at the hands of Ottoman Empire troops will not go away, and it’s
led to a renewed series of diplomatic squabbles.
For Armenians and many others, there is no question: The Ottomans
slaughtered 1.5 million Armenian civilians between 1915 and 1923, and
the world-especially Turkey, which has no normal diplomatic relations
with Armenia-should recognize it officially as genocide.
Turkey says the historical record is different and in any event,
historians not governments and politicians should address the issue-but
around the world, governments and politicians are weighing in.
In France, legislation was proposed to make denial of the Armenian
genocide a criminal offense-a hate crime along the lines of European
laws prohibiting denial of the Nazi Holocaust.
The bill was blocked in the French Parliament, but not before Turkey’s
ambassador went back to Ankara-not in protest, he later said in a letter
to the International Herald Tribune, but for consultations on the issue.
He also fought back against charges that his nation is afraid to discuss
the issue and suppresses free speech.
In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper publicly acknowledged the
genocide in May. In response, Turkey recalled its ambassador, but
similarly, the Turkish government said that move too was neither a
"withdrawal" nor a "protest," but a consultation. Turkey also declined
to participate in military exercises this spring in the western province
of Alberta.
The diplomatic tiff hit American airwaves and editorial pages this
spring as well. In April, PBS broadcast "The Armenian Genocide," which
Turkey’s ambassador to the United States, Nabi Sensoy, called "a
blatantly one-sided perspective of a tragic and unresolved period of
world history."
"Its premise is rejected not only by my government, but also by many
eminent scholars who have studied the period in question," Sensoy said
in a statement. "Instead of acknowledging that this issue remains
unresolved, the program reflects a self-serving political agenda by
Armenian American activists who seek to silence legitimate debate on
this issue and establish their spurious orthodoxy as the absolute
truth."
Armenia’s ambassador to the United States, Tatoul Markarian, responded
in a letter to the New York Times. "The Turkish government makes history
a precondition for normalizing interstate relations with Armenia," he
wrote. "Turkey needs first of all to reconcile with its own history, and
it must remove all taboos and stop persecution of Turkish authors who
dare address the 1915 events. Turkish scholars will then be able to
examine the rich historical record."
In the United States, a bill to recognize the genocide nearly passed
Congress in 2000 before President Clinton intervened to avoid a crisis
with Turkey.
Last year, then-U.S. Ambassador to Armenia John Evans was reassigned
because, say some Armenians and their allies, he acknowledged the
genocide in a speech. On June 7, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Edward
Kennedy (D-Mass.) wrote U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
demanding an explanation for Evans’s recent dismissal from the State
Department, and on June 12, the Armenian National Committee of America
launched a national campaign urging members to call Congress on the
matter. A few days later, about 60 members of the House wrote Rice to
urge Turkey to acknowledge the genocide, end its military control in
Cyprus, and drop what most call Turkey’s "blockade" of Armenia. The
letter also asked Rice to address "concerns" about Turkey’s prospective
European Union admission.
Turkey, however, sees conditions on the ground differently. "There is no
blockade of Armenia," Tuluy Tanc, minister-counselor at the Turkish
Embassy, told The Washington Diplomat. Tanc said the main reason for the
closure is that Armenia does not recognize the border, including Mount
Ararat in Turkey, which is seen as a national symbol. As a result,
although there is air travel between the countries, the land border is
closed.
The U.S. State Department calls the border closure, as well as the
closure of the Armenia-Azeri border, "devastating" to the nascent
Armenian economy-its growth in such areas as the diamond trade
notwithstanding.
The issue’s latest emergence comes when some see a lull in Turkey’s
enthusiasm for EU membership and when its relationship with the United
States is just now recovering from the divisions of the Iraq war.
In March 2003, just weeks before the war in Iraq began, Turkey’s
parliament voted to prevent the U.S.-led coalition from passing through
the country, and then on July 4 of that year, a rogue band of Turkish
soldiers were captured by U.S. forces in Iraq and harshly treated in an
episode largely forgotten about stateside but that outraged Turkish
citizens. Meanwhile, Turkey remains threatened by separatist Kurds in
Iraq and within its own borders.
With Turkey’s decision not to allow the coalition forces in their
country, the United States became much more dependent on Kurdish groups
in northern Iraq, said Henri Barkey, a longtime Turkey scholar and
chairman of the Department of International Relations at Lehigh
University in Bethlehem, Pa. "In a way, Turkey dealt itself out," Barkey
said. "And for the Turks, the Kurdish issue is vital. They are
completely paranoid about the Kurds."
Following a June 2005 visit to the United States by Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and an April 2006 visit to Turkey by Rice,
armed with a fresh initiative to talk more with Ankara, relations are
improving somewhat.
Marc Grossman, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey (1994-97), told The
Diplomat that Rice’s visit was already changing the tone. "The two sides
should sit down together and write what she called a ‘vision statement’
about what the United States-Turkey relationship is about and should be
about," Grossman said, describing Rice’s plan. "I think this is a great
idea."
"If you don’t pay attention to the relationship every day-on both sides,
in Washington and in Ankara-it’s subject to a certain amount of drift,"
added Grossman, who is now vice chairman of the Cohen Group, an
international consultancy headed by former Defense Secretary William
Cohen.
Grossman, a 29-year career diplomat who served as undersecretary of
state for political affairs, said Ankara should end the Armenia
blockade, but the best thing Turkey can do is be more vocal and clear in
its support of the new Iraqi government. "No one is going to benefit
outside of Iraq from a secure, stable, prosperous Iraq [more] than
Turkey," he said.
Michael Rubin, a former advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority
in Baghdad who is now with the American Enterprise Institute, is less
optimistic. "There is not a great deal of trust left in U.S.-Turkish
relations," he told The Diplomat by e-mail from Iraq. "Our diplomats say
nice words about dialogue, but the quality of talk is not there.
There is also growing frustration in the White House that Erdogan
blatantly tries to use his U.S. visits as an election ploy. He likes to
imply endorsements where none exists."
However, few people regard the issues with Armenia as essential to
Turkey’s EU admission or its relations with the United States.
"Turkey regards this as a side issue, but they certainly understand that
their would-be partners regard it as a stumbling block," said James
Holmes, president and chief executive officer of the American Turkish
Council, a business group. He noted that the genocide seems to be more
of an issue with the Armenian Diaspora than the Armenian government.
"For the Armenians, it’s their raison d’etre," Barkey said, adding that
the issue offers no good choices for Turkey. "If they say yes, they
would be branded as someone who committed genocide…. But if they admit
guilt, then they are guilty-90 years of purgatory notwithstanding."
He argues that Turkey has something of an identity crisis, ignoring
warts of its Ottoman past and celebrating its imagined glories. "There
is a little bit of denial in Turkey about the Ottoman Empire."
Sanjay Talwani is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.