Henry J. Barkey and Thomas de Waal: Armenia and Turkey: The Truce in Need of a Rescue
[Henri J. Barkey is a professor of international relations at Lehigh University and a visiting senior scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where Thomas de Waal is a senior associate on the Caucasus.]
For a while, it looked like the start of a great reconciliation. Armenia and Turkey have lived beneath the vast shadow of the mass murder of Armenians in eastern Turkey during World War I, and to this day they maintain no diplomatic ties. But in October, the Armenian and Turkish foreign ministers met in Switzerland and signed two protocols to set up relations, open their common border -- closed since 1993 -- and begin addressing the painful disputes that divide them. Each nation's governments must still ratify the agreements. The United States, with its large Armenian American community and strategic alliance with Turkey, threw its weight behind the deal.
But this great truce is already in need of a rescue, and if it breaks down, we will end up in a worse place than where we started. In January, Turkey showed signs of having cold feet. Its foreign ministry objected to a judgment by the Armenian constitutional court supporting the protocols on the grounds that they are consistent with the founding principles of the state, which commit it to pursuing recognition of the 1915 killings as genocide....
Why is Turkey trying to backtrack? Its government agreed to the protocols, in part because it wanted to prevent the U.S. administration and Congress from passing a resolution describing the Armenian massacres as genocide. But Ankara was surprised by the vehemence of the opposition the deal generated both at home and in its ally, Azerbaijan, which lost a conflict with the Armenians over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s....
Allowing these protocols to fail would unleash a destructive chain of events. An aggrieved U.S. Congress might press ahead with a genocide resolution, a move that would provoke a strong anti-American backlash in Turkey. The already faltering peace process over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict -- the major issue impeding peaceful development in the South Caucasus -- would be hit hard, and calls for war could resume in Azerbaijan....
More broadly, better relations with Armenia offer Turkey a chance to lift the burden of history from its shoulders. Turkey's ambitious foreign policy, with its goal of "zero problems with its neighbors" and becoming the central power in its region, will come to nothing if its enmity with Armenia endures. Tiny Armenia may be dwarfed by Turkey's size and clout, but it can lay claim to a moral imperative.
Read entire article at LA Times
For a while, it looked like the start of a great reconciliation. Armenia and Turkey have lived beneath the vast shadow of the mass murder of Armenians in eastern Turkey during World War I, and to this day they maintain no diplomatic ties. But in October, the Armenian and Turkish foreign ministers met in Switzerland and signed two protocols to set up relations, open their common border -- closed since 1993 -- and begin addressing the painful disputes that divide them. Each nation's governments must still ratify the agreements. The United States, with its large Armenian American community and strategic alliance with Turkey, threw its weight behind the deal.
But this great truce is already in need of a rescue, and if it breaks down, we will end up in a worse place than where we started. In January, Turkey showed signs of having cold feet. Its foreign ministry objected to a judgment by the Armenian constitutional court supporting the protocols on the grounds that they are consistent with the founding principles of the state, which commit it to pursuing recognition of the 1915 killings as genocide....
Why is Turkey trying to backtrack? Its government agreed to the protocols, in part because it wanted to prevent the U.S. administration and Congress from passing a resolution describing the Armenian massacres as genocide. But Ankara was surprised by the vehemence of the opposition the deal generated both at home and in its ally, Azerbaijan, which lost a conflict with the Armenians over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s....
Allowing these protocols to fail would unleash a destructive chain of events. An aggrieved U.S. Congress might press ahead with a genocide resolution, a move that would provoke a strong anti-American backlash in Turkey. The already faltering peace process over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict -- the major issue impeding peaceful development in the South Caucasus -- would be hit hard, and calls for war could resume in Azerbaijan....
More broadly, better relations with Armenia offer Turkey a chance to lift the burden of history from its shoulders. Turkey's ambitious foreign policy, with its goal of "zero problems with its neighbors" and becoming the central power in its region, will come to nothing if its enmity with Armenia endures. Tiny Armenia may be dwarfed by Turkey's size and clout, but it can lay claim to a moral imperative.