Has Turkey Traded Genocide for Karabakh?
Turkey resolutely denies that the hostilities involving the slaughter of Armenians in the early 20th century amounted to Genocide and each year it spends considerable resources to defend its position, especially in the US. This year Turkey’s leaders spent several months and went to extraordinary lengths to avoid US recognition, realizing the new US President and most of his senior administration supported Armenia’s claim of Genocide. That is understandable from a Turkish perspective. But it is disturbing that the Armenian negotiating parties have not added their voices to the Armenian lobby for the US to recognize Genocide, but understandable, as US recognition would put a stop to the plan they have been doing all they can to keep from the Armenian public. Sargsyan and Nalbandian have been ‘warming to the Turkish proposal to establish a commission of historians’ and they have said so on several occasions, not for the good of the Armenian Republic, but in pursuit of personal gain.
On April 6th and 7th, Turkey was host to the US President, first in Ankara then in Istanbul, hailed as the highlight of Obama’s European tour. Several weeks prior to the Obama visit, Turkey announced that it had removed the Karabakh issue from its list of pre-conditions for opening the Turkish / Armenian border, seemingly infuriating Azerbaijan, but clearly a tactical move to demonstrate Turkish acquiescence in a ‘warming relationship’ with the Armenian administration and part of Turkey’s concerted effort to avoid what seemed to be an inevitable US Genocide recognition. The Obama trip went according to plan with the US and Turkey singing each others praise. But for Armenia, whilst Obama confirmed his personal position had not changed, he avoided using the word Genocide.
Armenia’s MFA Nalbandian decided not to travel to Ankara to meet with US President Obama on the 6th April as planned, but he eventually managed to find time on April 7th in Istanbul. He returned to Yerevan bristling with confidence of an imminent border opening and assuring the Armenian public that he and his President would do nothing to jeopardize a possible US recognition of Genocide. In fact, they had already done their damndest to jeopardize a possible US recognition of Genocide, they had announced that negotiations with Turkey were developing well and they anticipated an early opening of the Armenian / Turkish border – possibly in April. Under these circumstances it would have been confrontational for Obama to talk about Armenia’s ‘Genocide’ in Turkey and he would have been blamed for spoiling the Turkish - Armenian reconciliation process.
Nalbandian had barely finished his press conference in Yerevan, when Turkey announced in Ankara, Baku and Yerevan that it was to re-introduce Karabakh to the border-opening list of pre-conditions, a seemingly provocative move, especially after the Obama visit and only two weeks prior to a much anticipated 24th April Obama declaration on Genocide in the US. The Turkish move completely contradicted Nalbandian’s statement, plus many such Nalbandian statements in the run-up to Obama’s trip to Turkey. Sargsyan responded in Yerevan, accusing Turkey of suddenly introducing hitherto unknown pre-conditions, although pre-conditions have been known and documented throughout the nearly year-long negotiation process, and neither Sargsyan nor his Minister of Foreign Affairs had ever explained in Armenia how they had been resolved. However, the ‘newly introduced pre-condition’ did not dampen Sargsyan’s enthusiasm and he re-confirmed he would be travelling through the newly opened border on his way to watch football in Turkey this October.
From this somewhat implausible chain of events, it is presumably to be believed that President Gul had a change of heart after negotiations between President Obama and Armenia’s MFA Nalbandian; that he decided to slap the well-intentioned face of his most powerful strategic ally by revoking on this critical and most sensitive of issues. If true, that would surely invoke US recognition of Armenia’s Genocide on the 24th.
Of course not, Turkey’s President Gul would never concede on the Genocide issue, knowing that 90 percent of the Turkish population is opposed, and at a time when his ratings had plummeted in a keenly contested democratic election. The conclusion can only be that Obama left Turkey thankful and relieved that Turkey and Armenia had agreed to resolve the Genocide issue between them, through Turkey’s commission of historians, or some other such mechanism. Armenia’s President Sargsyan is on record as saying he has no ambitions with regard the historic Armenian lands in the eastern part of Turkey, so only the Karabakh issue needs to be resolved for him to travel through the border in October this year, and Bryza’s opinion is that Karabakh will soon be resolved.
Armenia’s former President Kocharian has been preparing his deal on Karabakh for several years, held back firstly by the lack of an acceptable Azerbaijani compensation package, and secondly his nerve to commit to the deal, knowing he would face the backlash from an angry Armenian public. Kocharian waited his time and supported Sargsyan as his successor on the understanding that Sargsyan, when President, would go through with the agreement he dare not sign.
However, in the same way that Turkey would never withdraw its support from Azerbaijan with regard Karabakh, Azerbaijan is equally committed to supporting Turkey on Genocide. In July 2008, seeing that Sargsyan was determined to finalize the Kocharian deal on Karabakh, the Azerbaijani / Turkish allies joined forces and threw Genocide into the equation, knowing the self-imposed illegitimate Sargsyan regime would jump at the chance of adding to the package of compensation it was demanding in return for one of Armenia’s very few state assets left after Kocharian’s eight years of pillaging - Karabakh.
In August 2008, the Georgia conflict prompted Moscow to force the pace of negotiations, so Medvedev dangled a $500 million carrot; then the World economic crisis presented the opportunity for the US to throw a billion or so more dollars into the pot, conveniently facilitated by the World Bank and the IMF. Now half the World is on tenterhooks, waiting the next episode in this most unsavory Caucuses conflict resolution saga, which is due this 24th April in New York.
The Kocharian / Sargsyan Karabakh ‘Ace’ has already been played several times with the EU and PACE to chock up the illegitimate Sargsyan Presidency. Soon it will be played for the last time, to draw massive compensation in return for a beneficial agreement for Azerbaijan on Karabakh and for a Turkish commission of historians to finally eliminate Armenia’s claims of Genocide.
Turkey and Azerbaijan will have solved their longstanding problems with Armenia, the US will have been relieved the burden of Genocide recognition, Russia will see additional political clout and economic benefits in the Caucuses, and the Sargsyan / Kocharian regime will have a compensation package worth several billion dollars.
The vast majority of Armenians will be hoping that the US president stands by his promise and formally recognizes the Armenian Genocide this 24th April; in the longer term it will be beneficial to all parties concerned. Otherwise the Kocharian / Sargsyan regime will be having to cope with the backlash in Armenia, after having sold Armenia down the river with their ‘Karabakh / Genocide Deal’.
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Svante E. Cornell
The past several weeks have seen the level of diplomatic rumoring on a Turkish-Armenian rapprochement reach new heights. The Turkish government embarked on this endeavor seriously last Summer, a move that could redraw the geopolitics of the Caucasus in unpredictable ways, depending on how it is undertaken. While the initiative had much to do with Turkish-US relations, the Obama visit paradoxically coincided with Ankara being forced to hit the brakes on the issue, at least temporarily. It has once again been made clear that the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict remains the major security challenge in the region, and that it needs to be tackled head on.
Both factors contributed to prevent a normalization of relations. Suspicious of Armenian irredentism advanced especially by the Armenian diaspora, Ankara wanted Yerevan to recognize the border between the countries. Arguing that the initiation of diplomatic relations would imply the mutual recognition of borders, Armenian leaders refused to make what they termed a “superfluous statement” to that effect. Since 1998, moreover, the campaign to have the 1915 massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire recognized as “Genocide” has become government policy in Yerevan, bringing it in alignment with the diaspora groups and irritating Ankara further. Yet the closure of the border was related mainly to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, which escalated soon after the two countries’ independence in 1992. When Armenia intervened militarily on the side of the Nagorno Karabakh Armenians and deployed troops on Azerbaijani territory, Ankara sided with Azerbaijan, with which it enjoys close cultural and linguistic ties. The ethnic cleansing of over 800,000 Azerbaijani Turks from Karabakh itself and surrounding territories that Armenia has occupied since the war further solidified Ankara’s position.
In later years, Turkey sought to make the normalization of its relations with Armenia an element in the peace process between its two neighbors – essentially offering to open its border with Armenia at some point in a coordinated sequence of events that would contribute to a resolution of the conflict. Nevertheless, Turkey refused to take that step unilaterally, demanding prior Armenian concessions in the conflict; not to do so, the logic went, would lead to abandoning the remaining leverage on Armenia to vacate occupied territories, and essentially accepting the ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijanis. Turkey’s position has been close to paying off. In 2002, for example, former Azerbaijani president Heydar Aliyev offered to initiate economic and trade relations with Armenia in exchange for the liberation of four of the seven occupied provinces around Nagorno-Karabakh, at which point Turkey would also lift its economic embargo. Armenia, ruled by Robert Kocharyan, nevertheless refused, although this constituted the first sign of willingness by Baku to de-link the lifting of the economic embargo on Armenia from Karabakh’s status.
Yet fifteen years after the cease-fire, the border remains closed, the conflict unresolved, Armenia isolated, and the Azerbaijani displaced persons have yet to return to their homes. Meanwhile, the Armenian diaspora has stepped up its efforts to achieve international recognition of the massacres as Genocide; last year, only a determined intervention by the White House prevented the passing of a resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In Turkey, voices calling for a new approach to the Armenian question have gradually risen as the deadlock over Karabakh continues. Business lobbies from the eastern provinces bordering Armenia have called for the opening of the border, as have forces uneasy with a perception that Azerbaijan holds a veto over Turkish relations with a neighbor on an issue that hurts Turkey internationally. Indeed, Turkish leaders have been under pressure from both Washington and European capitals to normalize ties with Armenia.
Three reasons combined to change Ankara’s calculus in 2008. First, the AKP secured re-election in 2007, emboldening it in its foreign and domestic policies. Its foreign policy doctrine, formulated by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s chief advisor Ahmet Davutoglu, featured a “zero-problem” policy with neighbors; moreover, the AKP is rooted in political Islam, and therefore many of its leaders have a stronger self-identification as Muslims rather than as Turks. They therefore have only limited interest in the Turkic but secularized (and in the Azerbaijani case also mainly Shi’a rather than Sunni) post-Soviet republics compared to the non-Turkic but pious Middle East, which has always figured prominently in their priorities. Resistance to an opening toward Armenia was hence weakened.
Second, the war in Georgia shook the fragile status quo in the South Caucasus and led to greater activism in Ankara. More specifically, it led Ankara to propose a “Stability Platform” for the South Caucasus that significantly, aside from the three states of the South Caucasus, included Russia but no western power.(See Turkey Analyst, 29 August 2008) The initiative was well-received in Yerevan, whereas Baku and Tbilisi both reacted warily. That may seem curious for a Turkish initiative, but both capitals had reason for concern. In fact, the peculiar architecture of Russia, Turkey and the three small countries would further decrease Western influence in the region; moreover, some of the associated proposals appeared to serve to freeze the territorial situation in the region and thereby the occupation by Russia and Armenia, respectively, of about a fifth of Georgia’s and Azerbaijan’s territory. This shift in Turkish policy – which appeared to imply acceptance of a “junior partner” position to Russia in the Caucasus – opened the way for further contacts with Armenia.
President Barack Obama addresses Turkish Parliament
Third, Barack Obama was elected President of the U.S. in November. Obama had made it clearer than any major presidential candidate in modern history that he intended to recognize the Armenian massacres as Genocide if elected president, leading to acute concerns in Ankara. To thwart a resolution, Ankara was hence running out of options. Yet a rapprochement with Armenia could change the calculus in Washington. As everyone understood that U.S. recognition of the massacres as Genocide would make a Turkish-Armenian rapprochement domestically impossible, the prospect of exactly such a rapprochement could therefore influence both the Obama administration and moderate elements in the Armenian diaspora to desist from pressing for a resolution. In fact, arguing for one would now appear foolhardy, as it could prevent the best chance in years to improve Armenia’s regional situation.
IMPLICATIONS: These factors all combined to bring about the “soccer diplomacy” that began when Turkish President Abdullah Gül traveled to Yerevan in early September to attend a qualifying game between the national teams of the two countries. That in turn boosted a flurry of diplomatic exchanges and meetings between Turkish and Armenian cabinet ministers, accelerating in the first months of 2009. By late March, plans for a normalization of relations beginning in early April were unofficially announced and leaked to the media.
But these plans fudged the question whether Ankara had effectively de-linked its normalization of relations with Armenia from the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. In Baku, concerns were mounting that Ankara had done exactly that. It is clear from both Turkish and Azerbaijani sources that Ankara kept notifying Baku of most of its intentions, but fell far from consulting with its counterparts there, let alone seek ways to bring Baku on board.
Ali Babacan and Elmar Mammedyarov
Matters were brought to a point when President Obama announced his intention to travel to Turkey in early April, right after Turkey’s March 29 local elections. Azerbaijani officials started making their opposition to the developments known. Indeed, events were now pushing Baku to a crossroads. Baku already acutely felt the vacuum of Western presence in the region following the Russian-Georgian war, and was disillusioned by Turkish and German moves to stymie its prospects of exporting gas through the Nabucco pipeline to Europe. (See CACI Analyst, 25 March 2009) Turkish moves now led Baku to see the foundations of its balanced, pro-western foreign policy unraveling – all while Gazprom was tickling Baku by offering full European prices to buy all of Azerbaijan’s gas exports.
Baku’s reaction did not register in Turkish media and politics until after the local elections, in which the AKP did much worse than expected, losing almost ten percentage points compared to its results in the 2007 national elections. Turkish media and both main opposition parties now started castigating the government for selling out Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev then pulled out from a planned trip to the high-profile Istanbul summit of the Alliance of Civilizations. Turkish efforts to secure his attendance failed, as did two phone calls from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, including one promising a meeting with President Obama.
As Aliyev stayed home, Erdogan was faced with the choice of backpedaling or to appearing to sell out Azerbaijan – an option that could have caused strong reverberations domestically, even within his own party, and which could have been the final straw that pushed Baku into Moscow’s orbit. Predictably, Erdogan therefore backpedaled, making it clear that Armenian concessions on Karabakh remained a prerequisite for the ratification of any Turkish-Armenian agreement, if not its signing. Yerevan’s disappointment was best illustrated by Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian’s decision to delay his travels to Ankara for attending the summit.
CONCLUSIONS: The Turkish leadership may have achieved one major aim of his rapprochement with Armenia: following President Obama’s speech in the Turkish parliament and his clear efforts to rebuild the Turkish-American strategic partnership, American recognition of the 1915 massacres as Genocide are now quite unlikely – for this year. But the episode suggests a number of lessons for Turkish as well as American policy-makers to draw.
Events have made it clear that Turkish-Armenian relations and the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict are not easily de-linked. Turkey simply stands to lose too much by unilaterally normalizing relations and opening its border with Armenia without a quid pro quo from Yerevan. The domestic and regional losses would be so significant as to overshadow the possible benefits for any Turkish government.
Second, the key to these interlinked issues continue to remain in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. These events have served to remind the Turkish government that security and development in the South Caucasus is impossible without its full resolution. Whereas current Turkish and American leaders have sought to sidestep that fact and find shortcuts to improving regional security, recent events prove that the conflict can be ignored only both Washington’s and Ankara’s peril. Indeed, not only Azerbaijan’s interests are at stake, but Turkish and U.S. long-term interests are as well, most tangibly in energy security.
This implies that there is an opening for renewed investment of time and energy into a diplomatic push that would include both the conflict and the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement. But in an otherwise excellent speech to the Turkish parliament, President Obama only mentioned the Karabakh conflict in passing, referring to Turkey’s role in helping broker a solution. He refrained from stating America’s intention to take part in that effort.
It is now to be hoped that the four parties to this issue – Ankara, Yerevan, Baku and Washington – will draw the right conclusions from the episode: that a breakthrough to advance the security of all parties is within reach; but that it will be achieved not by a piecemeal approach but by a broader tackling of the underlying root causes of insecurity in the region, namely the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. That in turn involves the status of Nagorno-Karabakh as well as the occupation of Azerbaijani territories.
Given the improvements in Turkish-Armenian relations, it would now make sense for Washington to take the lead and broker a broader deal involving the three protagonists, that would secure the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations as well as substantial and concrete progress toward a resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. It may be worth revisiting a version of the 2002 gambit, whereby the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement coincides with an Armenian retreat from the occupied territories on Azerbaijan’s border with Iran, and the normalization of economic ties between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Such a package deal would truly help change the dynamics of the South Caucasus. It is achievable, but it would require sustained American commitment, and at the very least the appointment of a senior U.S. negotiator responsible for the issue.
Fontes: Turkishforum.com.tr
