ANKARA: Turkey and Armenia’s plan to restore relations is a diplomatic breakthrough, but a dispute over “genocide” and Turkish unease over a backlash from Azerbaijan may still derail a final agreement.
Ankara and Yerevan worked for months on establishing formal ties and opening their border, agreeing a “road map” shortly before US President Barack Obama was to make a statement yesterday on mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915.
The deal gives Obama time to hold off on a US Congress resolution describing the killings as genocide. But analysts warn nothing has been signed and many pitfalls lie ahead, including one of the last frozen conflicts in Europe — over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.
“It is a road map and because it is a road map there could be road accidents,” Faruk Logoglu, a former Turkish ambassador to Washington, told Reuters.
Muslim Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks in 1915, but strongly denies that up to 1.5 million died and that it amounted to genocide.
A Western diplomat said the road map committed the sides to establishing a joint history commission to look into the 1915 events, a taboo subject in Turkey.
Armenian lobby groups have long pushed for a recognition of genocide. But such an admission may infuriate nationalist public opinion in Turkey.
Further complicating a solution to a Turkey-Armenian thaw are the complex geopolitical allegiances in a region with strategic energy reserves. Azerbaijan, Turkey’s Muslim ally and Europe’s key hope as a supplier of gas for the planned multi-billion dollar Nabucco pipeline that would run through Turkey and cut Europe’s reliance on Russian gas, fears losing leverage over Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. The conflict remains unresolved. Turkey closed its frontier with Armenia in 1993, in solidarity with Azerbaijan in its war with Armenian-backed separatists in breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia would have to recognise Turkey’s territorial integrity, giving up historical claims to areas cleansed of Armenians during the World War One killings and deportations.
“Both sides are going to have to bite hard bullets,” said Semih Idiz, a columnist for Turkey’s daily Radikal who follows international affairs.
“It is not going to be an easy sell for public opinions in either of the two countries,” Idiz said.
While the road map appears to show Ankara wants to separate the two issues, Turkish official have been at pains to reiterate they will normalise ties only in parallel with a process to settle Nagorno-Karabakh.
“All the work being done is in line with the interests of both Turkish and Azeri sides. There is no problem in this regard,” Turkish President Abdullah Gul said in Ankara before heading for an energy security conference in Sofia yesterday.
Azerbaijan has been courted by Russia and has indicated it might revise its energy policy towards Turkey. “Armenia must use this opportunity and look not only to Turkey but also to Azerbaijan and take steps to give assurances that it wants progress in Nagorno-Karabakh,” Logoglu said.
An open border would bring huge benefits to both sides.
NATO member Turkey would increase its sway in the Caucasus, where a brief Russia-Georgia war last summer has heightened its desire for stability.
It would extend its influence into Central Asia and win plaudits from the European Union, which it wants to join, and the United States. Landlocked Armenia, an impoverished country of three million people which has always looked to Russia for protection, would gain key access to Turkish and European
markets.
