ARMENIA: NEW HOPES AND NEW FEARS
Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso, Italy
May 16 2014
Mikayel Zolyan | Yerevan
The 99th Anniversary Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide and the
20th anniversary of the Nagorno Karabakh ceasefire have recently
interweaved marking the two main external challenges for today’s
Armenia
Two dates of symbolic importance for Armenia passed recently. One
is well-known all over the world: April 24 marked 99 years since
the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. Another date is less known
outside of the region: on May 12, exactly 20 years ago, the ceasefire
that put an end to the war in Nagorno-Karabakh was signed. These
two dates symbolize what can be considered the two main external
challenges for Armenia today: Armenia-Turkey relations and the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. During the latest weeks there have been
certain developments in both issues that may be signs that status quo
is changing. However it is still hard to say whether these changes
are for better or for worse.
Nagorno-Karabakh: New Initiatives and New Obstacles
Against the background of the crisis in Ukraine, where Kiev, Moscow,
Brussels and Washington are unable to stop the escalation, the
ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh suddenly seems almost a success story.
Of course, today’s imperfect peace is fragile: Azerbaijan and Armenia
are effectively divided by a frontline and engaged in an arms race.
Time after time border incidents take place, sometimes with tragic
consequences, as soldiers are killed or wounded, mostly by sniper
fire. However, in spite of all this, the ceasefire has largely held
for 20 years, remarkably, in the absence of a peacekeeping force in
the region.
Sergey Minasyan, vice-director of Caucasus Institute, a Yerevan-based
think tank, says that two major factors have contributed to the
continuing relative peace. One is the balance of power: though
Azerbaijan has been heavily arming itself, Armenia has so far managed
to keep up, partly through its alliance with Russia and membership in
the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization). The other factor
is the presence of international institutions, first of all the OSCE,
or more precisely, the so called OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, i.e.
Russia, the U.S. and France.
Recently, the newly appointed US representative James Warlick
has been the most active among the mediators. Thus, he initiated a
series of meetings with stakeholders, including, for the first time,
representatives of Armenian and Azerbaijani Diasporas in the U.S.
Later, he issued a statement, in which he voiced the main principles
that have been on the table of negotiations for several years.
Warlick’s activity has made him a target for angry reactions from
both sides: Azerbaijani government was unhappy about his meetings with
US Armenians, and both Armenian and Azerbaijani media criticized his
statement. However, if Warlick’s aim was to lift the veil of secrecy
surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh talks and to revive the debate around
the peace plan, he definitely succeeded.
In his statement Warlick also stressed the importance of 2nd
track diplomacy, i.e. contacts between civil society. However, the
future of citizen diplomacy when it comes to Nagorno-Karabakh is
today uncertain. On April 30, Azerbaijani well-known journalist Rauf
Mirkadyrov, who had participated in numerous citizen diplomacy programs
with Armenian colleagues, was detained by Azerbaijani authorities
on charges of spying for Armenia. Several days later, two prominent
representatives of Azerbaijani civil society, who also participated
in such programs, Arif and Leyla Yunus (they are husband and wife),
were detained with similar charges.
This is the first case when such charges are leveled at participants of
citizen diplomacy efforts. The authorities, whether in Yerevan, Baku or
Stepanakert, have traditionally tolerated 2nd track diplomacy efforts,
mostly sponsored by the West, even though these programs were often
viewed with suspicion. Participants of such initiatives were sometimes
harassed by nationalist activists, police or security services, but
they were not jailed. It is hard to say whether the recent arrests are
a conscious attempt to stifle citizen diplomacy programs or an attempt
to silence government critics. Since Ilham Aliev came to power, Baku
has been more suspicious of such efforts than Yerevan and Stepanakert,
since it saw them as legitimizing the status quo.
Whatever the case, recent arrests have had a chilling effect on
Armenian-Azerbaijani peace-building initiatives, like the EU sponsored
ambitious EPNK program and increased the level of overall tension in
the region. Marina Nagai, from the London-based International Alert
NGO, which has worked in the field for years and is today part of
the EPNK, says that “The concept and purpose of peacebuilding is
often not fully understood and fraught with wrong expectations and
misconceptions… this partly explains the reason why the societies
and authorities might treat peacebuilding initiatives, particularly
dialogue and joint activities, with suspicion and mistrust.”
Armenia-Turkey: a Public Relation Stunt or Genuine Change?
When it comes to Armenia-Turkey the situation is quite ambiguous too.
On the one hand the Armenian-Turkish protocols signed in 2009 seem
dead, and propaganda warfare is intensified in expectation of 2015,
the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. On the other hand,
there are signs that Armenia-Turkey relations may be not as frozen
as they seemed until recently.
On April 23 Turkish prime-minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a
statement, offering condolences to the “grandchildren of… Armenians
who lost their lives in the context of the early twentieth century”.
The rest of the statement for most part reproduced the official
Turkish version of events, i.e. Armenians in 1915 were subject to
“relocation” rather than genocide, therefore Armenians’ suffering
was a consequence of war and “difficult times for Ottoman Empire”,
just like “the suffering for Turkish, Kurdish, Arab, Armenian and
millions of other Ottoman citizens”. Thus, Erdogan’s statement
by no way means recognition of genocide, or even of the fact that
Armenians were deliberately targeted by the Ottoman state. However,
in any case Erdogan’s statement attracted a lot of attention since
it is the first time a head of Turkish government has offered his
condolences to Armenians in relation to the events of 1915.
On May 2, Turkish foreign minister Davutoglu published an article,
elaborating on Erdogan’s message. Like Erdogan, Davutoglu, while
remaining within the framework of the official Turkish position
on 1915, tried to strike a conciliatory note: he acknowledged the
prominent role of Armenians to the Ottoman Empire, and even mentioned
some prominent Ottoman Armenians, including musician Komitas, who was
one of the victims of 1915 (though he survived the exile to desert,
he lost his sanity and never recovered).
Too little, too late?
For most Armenians, however, both in Armenia and in the Diaspora,
these messages are “too little, too late”. Aram Hamparian, head of
the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) called Erdogan’s
statement “denial repackaged”, and Serzh Sargsyan’s chief of staff,
Vigen Sargsyan, described it as “an advanced form of denial”. Refusal
to acknowledge that Armenians in 1915 were subjected to deliberate
extermination continues to anger Armenians, and the conciliatory
tone of Turkey’s leaders is undermined by the continuing blockade of
Armenia by Turkey. However, while rejecting Erdogan’s view of history,
the Armenian government also was careful to include a conciliatory
message: Serzh Sargsyan’s April 24 statement emphasized that “we do not
consider Turkish society as our enemy”, and devoted a whole paragraph
to “Turks who lent a helping hand to their Armenian neighbors”.
Commentators note that changes in the Turkish leaders’ tone may be a
result of a changing Turkish strategy in expectation of 2015. While
the Turkish government is not ready to recognize the events of
1915 as genocide, today, after genocide recognitions by several
countries, the advent of Internet and increasing openness of the
Turkish society, simply dismissing the issue as “Armenian propaganda”
is no longer an option. Another reason behind Erdogan’s attempt to
strike a conciliatory tone may be geopolitical. Some commentators
are talking about an attempt on the part of mediators to revive the
Armenia-Turkey normalization process. Conciliatory notes in both
Erdogan’s and Sargsyan’s statements can be a sign that these efforts
have not been completely futile.
Civil society efforts
In any case, in one respect the Armenia-Turkey relations are strikingly
different from the situation around Nagorno-Karabakh. In spite of all
the ups and downs of government diplomacy, civil society contacts
have been steadily strengthening for several years. Armenian and
Turkish NGOs have been engaged in citizen diplomacy efforts long
before the Armenia-Turkey protocols, and these contacts are further
expanding today. A group of Armenian journalists and NGO activists
went to Turkey on April 24, where they took part in the Armenian
genocide commemoration organized by liberal Turkish groups. Visits
of Turkish civil society representatives to Armenia have also become
routine. Marine Manucharyan, whose NGO Civic Forum is engaged in both
Armenian-Turkish and Armenian-Azerbaijani reconciliation efforts,
says that the two processes are very different. In the first case, in
spite of some significant obstacles, there is also significant support
for dialogue within the societies. But, in the second case, she says,
things are more difficult: “With the recent events in Azerbaijan,
we are afraid that there will be no people left who would be willing
to cooperate with us”.
http://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Regions-and-countries/Armenia/Armenia-New-Hopes-and-New-Fears-151970