Failure to implement the Ankara-Yerevan normalization deal will likely strengthen ‘genocide bills’ in US Congress.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan’s talks with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House earlier this week have mostly been viewed as a success by analysts. However,an uphillreconciliation process between Turkey and Armenia may be the sign of acreeping deterioration in U.S.-Turkish ties next year.
“I congratulated the prime minister on some courageous steps he has taken around the issue of normalizing Turkish-Armenian relations, and encouraged him to continue to move forward along this path,” Obama told reporters in a joint statement with Erdoðan at the White House on Monday.
He was referring to the fact that the Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers on Oct. 10 signed a set of agreements under which Ankara and Yerevan should set up normal diplomatic relations and reopen their land border. The deal, if ratified by the parliaments of the two neighbors, would effectively end decades of hostile relations. But the Turkish and Armenian ratifications have not come yet.
In a letter to some major Armenian-American groups last week, Obama also said, “Normalization between Armenia and Turkey should move forward without preconditions and within a reasonable timeframe.”
The issue at the root of the problem is the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Turkey’s close friend and ally. Azerbaijani-Armenian dispute
Nagorno-Karabakh, a mostly Armenian-populated enclave of Azerbaijan, and parts of Azerbaijan proper have been under Armenian occupation since a war in the early 1990s. As a result of the conflict, Turkey has refused to establish normal diplomatic relations with Yerevan and has kept the land border with Armenia closed since 1993. Erdoðan told Obama that reopening the border before progress is achieved in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict would ruin Turkey’s ties with Azerbaijan and be viewed as completely unacceptable to Turkish voters.
“The normalization process between Turkey and Armenia is very much related to these issues (of improvement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani ties),” Erdoðan told reporters at the White House.
His remarks were seen by some that the Turkish parliament would most probably not ratify any normalization deal with Armenia before strong signs are observed for an end to the Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani lands.
But even at a time when Washington is pushing for the normalization process to be implemented “without preconditions and within a reasonable timeframe,” analysts agree that strong progress toward putting an end to the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute seems unlikely, at least in the short term. These all point to a potential stall in the Turkey-Armenia reconciliation process.
“In addition to escalating his Armenian genocide denial demands, Erdoðan also made clear that his government would not respect either of the two U.S. priorities for Turkey-Armenia normalization: no preconditions and a reasonable timeframe,” the Armenian National Committee of America, or ANCA, the largest Armenian-American group, said in a statement late Tuesday.
Pending genocide recognition bills
ANCA and other Armenian-American organizations are seeking formal U.S. recognition of World War
With the probable failure of the Turkey-Armenia normalization process, the Armenian-American groups and their congressional backers are planning to
Obama, who as a candidate had pledged to recognize the Armenian killings as “genocide” if elected president during last year’s election campaign, reversed his position as president this year and fully backed the Ankara-Yerevan normalization process, saying he would refrain from any move that would jeopardize the process. The Obama administration is expected to continue to oppose congressional “genocide” recognition resolutions.
But in a year of election-related uncertainties in 2010, if such a bill, by any chance, is passed by either the House or the Senate, the Ankara-Yerevan normalization deal would be imperiled and U.S.-Turkish relations could suffer in a major and lasting way, as Turkey has already warned.
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