The Washington Diplomat
July, 2006
Turkey , Looking to Future,
Battles Its Past With Armenia
by Sanjay Talwani
Most nations involved in conflicts try to remain forward-looking. But for Turkey , the recurring 90-year-old question of what happened in Armenia at the hands of Ottoman Empire troops will not go away, and it’s led to a renewed series of diplomatic squabbles.
For Armenians and many others, there is no question: The Ottomans slaughtered 1.5 million Armenian civilians between 1915 and 1923, and the world-especially Turkey , which has no normal diplomatic relations with Armenia -should recognize it officially as genocide.
Turkey says the historical record is different and in any event, historians not governments and politicians should address the issue-but around the world, governments and politicians are weighing in.
In France , legislation was proposed to make denial of the Armenian genocide a criminal offense-a hate crime along the lines of European laws prohibiting denial of the Nazi Holocaust.
The bill was blocked in the French Parliament, but not before Turkey ‘s ambassador went back to Ankara -not in protest, he later said in a letter to the International Herald Tribune, but for consultations on the issue. He also fought back against charges that his nation is afraid to discuss the issue and suppresses free speech.
In Canada , Prime Minister Stephen Harper publicly acknowledged the genocide in May. In response, Turkey recalled its ambassador, but similarly, the Turkish government said that move too was neither a “withdrawal” nor a “protest,” but a consultation. Turkey also declined to participate in military exercises this spring in the western province of Alberta .
The diplomatic tiff hit American airwaves and editorial pages this spring as well. In April, PBS broadcast “The Armenian Genocide,” which Turkey ‘s ambassador to the United States , Nabi Sensoy, called “a blatantly one-sided perspective of a tragic and unresolved period of world history.”
“Its premise is rejected not only by my government, but also by many eminent scholars who have studied the period in question,” Sensoy said in a statement. “Instead of acknowledging that this issue remains unresolved, the program reflects a self-serving political agenda by Armenian American activists who seek to silence legitimate debate on this issue and establish their spurious orthodoxy as the absolute truth.”
Armenia ‘s ambassador to the United States , Tatoul Markarian, responded in a letter to the New York Times. “The Turkish government makes history a precondition for normalizing interstate relations with Armenia ,” he wrote. “ Turkey needs first of all to reconcile with its own history, and it must remove all taboos and stop persecution of Turkish authors who dare address the 1915 events. Turkish scholars will then be able to examine the rich historical record.”
In the United States , a bill to recognize the genocide nearly passed Congress in 2000 before President Clinton intervened to avoid a crisis with Turkey .
Last year, then-U.S. Ambassador to Armenia John Evans was reassigned because, say some Armenians and their allies, he acknowledged the genocide in a speech. On June 7, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) wrote U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanding an explanation for Evans’s recent dismissal from the State Department, and on June 12, the Armenian National Committee of America launched a national campaign urging members to call Congress on the matter. A few days later, about 60 members of the House wrote Rice to urge Turkey to acknowledge the genocide, end its military control in Cyprus , and drop what most call Turkey ‘s “blockade” of Armenia . The letter also asked Rice to address “concerns” about Turkey ‘s prospective European Union admission.
Turkey , however, sees conditions on the ground differently. “There is no blockade of Armenia ,” Tuluy Tanc, minister-counselor at the Turkish Embassy, told The Washington Diplomat. Tanc said the main reason for the closure is that Armenia does not recognize the border, including Mount Ararat in Turkey , which is seen as a national symbol. As a result, although there is air travel between the countries, the land border is closed.
The U.S. State Department calls the border closure, as well as the closure of the Armenia-Azeri border, “devastating” to the nascent Armenian economy-its growth in such areas as the diamond trade notwithstanding.
The issue’s latest emergence comes when some see a lull in Turkey ‘s enthusiasm for EU membership and when its relationship with the United States is just now recovering from the divisions of the Iraq war.
In March 2003, just weeks before the war in Iraq began, Turkey ‘s parliament voted to prevent the U.S.-led coalition from passing through the country, and then on July 4 of that year, a rogue band of Turkish soldiers were captured by U.S. forces in Iraq and harshly treated in an episode largely forgotten about stateside but that outraged Turkish citizens. Meanwhile, Turkey remains threatened by separatist Kurds in Iraq and within its own borders.
With Turkey’s decision not to allow the coalition forces in their country, the United States became much more dependent on Kurdish groups in northern Iraq, said Henri Barkey, a longtime Turkey scholar and chairman of the Department of International Relations at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. “In a way, Turkey dealt itself out,” Barkey said. “And for the Turks, the Kurdish issue is vital. They are completely paranoid about the Kurds.”
Following a June 2005 visit to the United States by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and an April 2006 visit to Turkey by Rice, armed with a fresh initiative to talk more with Ankara, relations are improving somewhat.
Marc Grossman, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey (1994-97), told The Diplomat that Rice’s visit was already changing the tone. “The two sides should sit down together and write what she called a vision statement’ about what the United States-Turkey relationship is about and should be about,” Grossman said, describing Rice’s plan. “I think this is a great idea.”
“If you don’t pay attention to the relationship every day-on both sides, in Washington and in Ankara -it’s subject to a certain amount of drift,” added Grossman, who is now vice chairman of the Cohen Group, an international consultancy headed by former Defense Secretary William Cohen.
Grossman, a 29-year career diplomat who served as undersecretary of state for political affairs, said Ankara should end the Armenia blockade, but the best thing Turkey can do is be more vocal and clear in its support of the new Iraqi government. “No one is going to benefit outside of Iraq from a secure, stable, prosperous Iraq [more] than Turkey ,” he said.
Michael Rubin, a former advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad who is now with the American Enterprise Institute, is less optimistic. “There is not a great deal of trust left in U.S.-Turkish relations,” he told The Diplomat by e-mail from Iraq . “Our diplomats say nice words about dialogue, but the quality of talk is not there. There is also growing frustration in the White House that Erdogan blatantly tries to use his U.S. visits as an election ploy. He likes to imply endorsements where none exists.”
However, few people regard the issues with Armenia as essential to Turkey ‘s EU admission or its relations with the United States .
“ Turkey regards this as a side issue, but they certainly understand that their would-be partners regard it as a stumbling block,” said James Holmes, president and chief executive officer of the American Turkish Council, a business group. He noted that the genocide seems to be more of an issue with the Armenian Diaspora than the Armenian government.
“For the Armenians, it’s their raison d’etre,” Barkey said, adding that the issue offers no good choices for Turkey . “If they say yes, they would be branded as someone who committed genocide…. But if they admit guilt, then they are guilty-90 years of purgatory notwithstanding.”
He argues that Turkey has something of an identity crisis, ignoring warts of its Ottoman past and celebrating its imagined glories. “There is a little bit of denial in Turkey about the Ottoman Empire .”
Sanjay Talwani is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.
