Progress in repairing Turkish-Armenian relations is showing potential again as Turkey’s prime minister sends a high-level diplomat to meet with leaders of Armenia. Tall hurdles remain, but PM Erdoğan says there is a good chance for him to meet with the Armenian president at an upcoming US conference if there’s positive feedback from the visiting diplomat.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has dispatched a top Turkish diplomat to Yerevan for talks in an effort to revive the stalled normalization process between Turkey and Armenia ahead of a key visit to Washington next week.
Turkish Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu met Wednesday with Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian and was also scheduled to meet President Serge Sarkisian, diplomatic sources told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.
Speaking in Paris, Erdoğan said a possible meeting between himself and Sarkisian on the sidelines of an international nuclear security summit in Washington on April 12-13 depended on a positive response from Armenia.
Sinirlioğlu, who conducted talks in Yerevan as the prime minister’s special envoy, delivered Erdoğan’s letter to Armenian officials and was exploring the possibilities of an Erdoğan-Sarkisian meeting.
Ankara to Yerevan: ‘We’re ready to talk’
Diplomatic sources contacted by the Daily News said the letter included Turkey’s commitment to the two protocols signed between Ankara and Yerevan in October 2009 to establish diplomatic relations, Turkey’s resolve to move forward with the normalization process and Ankara’s readiness to discuss ways to remove the existing obstacles.
Ankara’s major concern stems from a January ruling of a top Armenian court which ruled that the protocols were compatible with the Armenian Constitution but said they could not contradict Yerevan’s official position that the 1915 killings of Armenians amount to “genocide,” a label fiercely rejected by Ankara. In the protocols, Turkey has proposed the establishment of a joint history commission to study genocide allegations.
Armenia claims up to 1.5 million Armenians were systematically killed in 1915 during the Ottoman Empire. Turkey has denied this, saying any deaths were the result of civil strife that erupted when Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia.
In order to come to force, the Turkish-Armenian deals need parliamentary ratification in the two countries’ parliaments, yet the process has been held up by a blame game.
The process has been further marred by subsequent “genocide” resolutions passed last month by a United States House panel and the Swedish parliament, both of which labeled the 1915 events as genocide.
'Objective is normalization'
Despite that, Ankara says the protocols are not dead but wants the elements in the Armenian court ruling to be corrected for progress in the normalization process.
“The objective is to normalize our relationship with Armenia,” said a senior Turkish diplomat to the Daily News, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“The [normalization] process had already begun before Obama came to power in the United States,” said the diplomat, referring to a longer phase of secret negotiations between the two countries’ diplomats under Swiss mediation in 2007.
Open dialogue welcomed
Analysts welcomed the Turkish initiative to send an envoy to Yerevan as a willingness to keep bilateral channels open in a “multi-actor game.”
“Turkey is aware of the fact that it needs to take a step to refresh the process because the blame policy has backfired,” said Burcu Gültekin Punsmann, a Caucasus expert at Ankara think tank TEPAV. “The ball is in Turkey’s court,” she argued.
Kamer Kasım, from the International Strategic Research Organisation, or USAK, another Ankara think tank, said he believed the Armenian court ruling had left the protocols empty but still considered the Turkish diplomat’s trip to Yerevan as positive.
“This is an important initiative before Erdoğan’s Washington visit, both to keep the pulse in Yerevan and to show Ankara’s readiness to engage in direct dialogue with Armenia,” he said.
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