GARBIS: ARMENIANS REACT TO ‘FAILING’ TURKISH-ISRAELI RELATIONS
Christian Garbis
Armenian Weekly
Fri, Jul 9 2010
With recent news reports about renewed efforts to have official
resolutions recognizing the genocide passed by the U.S. Congress-with
the support of Jewish interest groups-and even in the Knesset, Yerevan
Armenians are trying to make sense of the changing political tide in
the region.
One school of thought is that in both U.S. and Israeli lawmaking
bodies, the resolution will be put to a vote will not pass-although
by a slim margin in an attempt to scare Turkey. As a result, economic
and diplomatic ties will begin to strengthen once again.
On the surface this seems unlikely, however, given Ankara’s recent
efforts to step up its relations with Tehran. On June 9, Turkey refused
to vote in favor of UN-sponsored sanctions against Iran for pursuing
its nuclear program. The refusal slighted the U.S., yet diplomatic
relations between the two countries remain largely unaffected.
“The Jews have their own interests to look after first of all,”
said Shahan Ounjian of Beirut, Lebanon, who is the proprietor of a
Yerevan tavern called Pub Che. “When did the Armenians ever factor
into those interests?”
“The Jews are playing cards, and now they’re supposedly trying to play
the Armenian hand by using genocide recognition to get at the Turks,”
he added.” But a resolution recognizing the genocide won’t pass
[in the Knesset]. Relations between Turkey and Israel won’t worsen.”
Some Armenians believe that although bad blood is circulating as a
result of the flotilla incident of May 30, during which nine people
were killed when Israeli forces squashed a Turkish-initiated relief
effort to help the people of Gaza, long-term Turkish-Israeli relations
will not be indefinitely hampered. Rather, the incident was used as
a way for Turkey to increase its span of influence in the Middle East.
On June 2, Alexander Iskandaryan, the director of the Caucasus
Institute, said in a press conference that the strain in relations
between Turkey and Israel was not new, but the level that it has
reached was.
“It’s necessary to spoil relations with Israel in order to play
a greater role in the Middle East. It fits into the framework of
Turkish-Israeli and Turkish-Iraqi relations,” he said.
On June 3, the head of the National New Conservative Movement, Edward
Apramyan, was quoted by the Armenian press as stating that the Armenian
Genocide recognition issue would only become a “matter of speculation.”
“What’s happening in Turkish-Israeli relations now had been planned
two to three years ago,” he said.
The president of the Constitutional Right Union, Hayk Babukhanyan,
said in a news conference on June 4 that the situation Turkey has
found itself in is a coincidence, and that all those who believe the
country has somehow changed as a consequence of the flotilla incident
are naive.
“How can Turkey demand an apology from another country, when Turkey
itself has been refusing to apologize for its evils in the course of 95
years?” he said. “How can Turkey call another country an aggressor,
when it has conquered part of Cyprus? Turkey is guided by double
standards, and Europe and the UN accept the rules of this game.”
From: A. Papazian