YEREVAN – ANKARA, THE BIG CHILL
Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso, Italy
Feb 5 2014
Mikayel Zolyan | Yerevan
5 February 2014
Seven years after Hrant Dink’s tragic death in Istanbul, his dream
of an Armenian-Turkish reconciliation seems as distant as ever
On January 19 thousands of people marched in the streets of Istanbul,
holding signs in Turkish and Armenian, in commemoration of the 7th
anniversary of the tragic death of the journalist Hrant Dink. It may
be a sign of changing times in Turkey that thousands of people took
to the streets in memory of an ethnic Armenian journalist. However,
the dream that was so dear to Hrant Dink, the reconciliation between
Armenia and Turkey, seems today almost as remote as it had been before
his murder.
Currently, says Artak Ayunts, a conflict resolution expert from
Yerevan, on the official level the relations between the two countries
are at the lowest point since 2007. Signs are abundant that Armenia
and Turkey are drifting even further apart than they were (if that is
possible). Even though the Armenian-Turkish protocols signed in 2009
have not been formally discarded, neither side has ratified them and it
is impossible to imagine that they will be ratified in the foreseeable
future. Neither the much publicized visit of Turkish foreign minister
to Yerevan, when he took part in the Black Sea Economic Cooperation
meeting on December 12 2013, nor the communication between Davutoglu
and Nalbandyan at OSCE meeting in Kiev several days earlier, have
lead to any significant outcomes.
After the meeting between Davutoglu and Nalbandyan in Yerevan,
instead of holding a joint press conference, Davutogly gave a press
conference to Turkish journalists, while Armenian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs issued a statement. Apart from general thoughts, neither side
expressed any new ideas. Some attention was drawn to Davutoglu’s
remarks, quoted by Turkish newspapers: he acknowledged that what
happened to Armenians in 1915 was “completely wrong” and “inhumane”.
However, this hardly can be interpreted as willingness to go beyond
Ankara’s traditional position, since Davutoglu immediately added that
Armenia in its turn should be ready to acknowledge the suffering
that Turks have been through during these events. In other words,
Davutoglu was largely reproducing the traditional Turkish view,
according to which what happened in 1915 was not a genocide organized
by the Turkish state, but rather series of ethnic clashes, of which
both Armenians and Turks suffered.
End of the football diplomacy in Armenia
Armenia has emerged disillusioned from the so called “football
diplomacy”. Signing protocols had been a bold step for Armenia’s
president Serzh Sargsyan, who received a lot of criticism for
it. One of the ruling coalition parties, Dashnaktsutyun, even left
the coalition because of the protocols. The reaction of the Diaspora
was furious, and arguably Sargsyan’s government has never been able
to recover its standing among Diaspora communities (of course, the
Armenian-Turkish deal was not the only cause for this, allegations
of corruption and election fraud also played their part).
There are signs of hardening of the Armenian position, such as the
suggestion by one of the members of the cabinet that the Republic
of Armenia should be renamed into Republic of Eastern Armenia (which
implies a territorial claim to Turkey). Though the suggestion was not
taken seriously and was criticized even by some members of the ruling
party, it is a clear sign of how unhappy the Armenian government is
with the current state of Armenia-Turkey relations.
Attitudes of the Armenian society, which had begun to change
during the times of football diplomacy, are also hardening. The
way a relatively minor incident was covered in Armenian media
showed that the Armenian public is also disappointed in the idea
of Armenian-Turkish rapprochement. Hasan Oktay, a Turkish political
analyst, who has often visited Armenia, and, as it turned out, has
nationalist political views, posted on his Facebook profile photos
of himself holding the Turkish nationalist “grey wolves” salute
in Yerevan’s central square. This does not seem like a major cause
for scandal, but Oktay’s Facebook profile also featured his photos
posing with Armenia’s prime-minister, Tigran Sargsyan, and even with
the Catholicos of all Armenians, Garegin I. Newspapers and social
networks harshly criticized the prime-minister and the Catholicos,
for meeting a Turkish radical nationalist.
Turkey and the 2015 anniversary
As for Turkey, here the Armenian issue is hardly one of the priorities
for politicians, while the civil war in Syria and the corruption
scandal continue to occupy the headlines of the newspapers. However,
one thing forces the Turkish government to draw attention to the
Armenian issue: next year, in 2015, it will be the 100th anniversary
of the extermination of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. The 100th
anniversary of the Armenian genocide is a date of major symbolic
significance, and the Armenian Diaspora communities are getting ready
for a forceful campaign aimed at genocide recognition.
The Turkish government may use two possible strategies of countering
the negative effects of the genocide anniversary, says historian
Tigran Zakaryan. One is to continue to do what Turkey has done for
decades, responding to Armenian Diaspora’s awareness campaign with
its own lobbying and counter-propaganda. Another possible strategy
is acknowledging certain facts of violence against the Armenians,
and even expressing regret for certain episodes, in order to show
that Turkey has come to terms with its past, without however accepting
that the killings of 1915 constituted a genocide.
Probably, says Zakaryan, Turkish policies will combine elements of
both strategies. However, apart from the external challenge presented
by Armenian Diaspora, the Turkish government will also have to deal
with the increasingly skeptic attitude of various groups within the
Turkish society toward the officially accepted narrative of history.
In any case, the issue of genocide recognition is likely to cause a
lot of headache for the Turkish government until April 2015.
From: Baghdasarian
http://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/All-news/Yerevan-Ankara-the-big-chill-147606