Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in a surprise development this week, sent Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu to Yerevan as his private envoy, bearing a letter addressed to Armenian President Serge Sarkisian.
Erdoğan asked for a meeting with Sarkisian next week in Washington, where both leaders will attend the summit on nuclear disarmament hosted by the Obama administration.
In the meantime, there were indications as this piece was being written that the Armenian parliament could ratify the Zurich protocols, which were signed a year ago by the foreign ministers of Turkey and Armenia, and which foresee the normalization of ties between the two countries.
The ratification and subsequent implementation of the protocols had stalled due to the different interpretations and conditions the sides imposed on them later. On the Turkish side, it became instantly apparent that the “Azeri dimension” had been underestimated all along.
As voices of protest raised in Azerbaijan found receptive ears in Turkey, Prime Minister Erdoğan was forced to travel to Baku and assure his Azerbaijani interlocutors that there would be no ratification until the Karabakh talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan have started moving in a positive direction.
This immediately angered Yerevan, which said – correctly – that there is no reference to the Karabakh issue in the protocols, and that this therefore could not be made a precondition for the implementation of these protocols.
On the Armenian side, the country’s constitutional court said in a ruling that the protocols could not violate the nation’s founding document, which makes it incumbent on Armenian governments to work to get international recognition for the genocide Armenians say they suffered at the hands of Ottoman Turks in 1915.
This in turn angered Ankara, where the government said the protocols foresee the establishment of an independent commission of historians to look into the events of 1915. The Turkish side argued that the Armenian court had prejudged the work of this commission.
Some in Ankara also said the court had created some ambiguity on the question of whether Armenia actually accepts Turkey’s territorial integrity, and the present border between the two countries.
Despite the qualifications it brought to the protocols, the Armenian constitutional court nevertheless deemed them to be in compliance with the country’s constitution, creating a contradictory situation, since it was not clear whether the court had endorsed the protocols with preconditions or without them.
It should, in fact, have been apparent at the start that these problems would inevitably appear, requiring both governments to act boldly, and against political odds, in order to ensure that the protocols are ratified and implemented.
Also overlooked was the fact that nationalist sentiment and mutual animosity run deep between the two peoples, which is, after all, the basic reason why we are where we are today. The serious problems that the Armenian diaspora is in a position to cause were also underestimated.
Given this backdrop, one wonders what Prime Minister Erdoğan’s motive was in sending a high-level envoy to President Sarkisian at this point in time. One also wonders why the Armenian parliament has started to debate the protocols in question, with a view to possibly ratifying them, given that it recently adopted a bill enabling Armenia to withdraw its signature from the protocols.
It is not hard to see that the sides are playing a kind of diplomatic checkers game here, since a chess game requires little more sophistication. The basic effort seems to be not to appear the spoiler in front of the international community in terms of the attempts to normalize ties, and to try to shift the blame to the other side.
It was telling, for example, that it was announced that Ambassador Sinirlioğlu was going to Yerevan while Prime Minister Erdoğan was in Paris – where he also met French President Nicolas Sarkozy – and just prior to traveling to Washington for next week’s nuclear summit.
Erdoğan is also expected to have a bilateral meeting with President Obama while there, now that the chill in ties – which emerged after the Foreign Relations Committee of the House of Representatives adopted an Armenian “genocide” resolution – is ostensibly over.
The U.S. and France are the two countries that have caused the most headache for Turkey in terms of Armenian “genocide” resolutions. This move by Erdoğan also comes, of course, just before President Obama’s commemorative April 24 message on the events of 1915.
One would not be too cynical in assuming that there is a connection between all of these, nor to conclude that Ankara is trying to allay the impression that it is the one that is blocking developments with Armenia.
But Prime Minister Erdoğan has a serious credibility problem because of the promise he made to Azerbaijan. He told reporters in Paris this week that Turkey remains committed to its signature on the Zurich protocols. But he did not indicate how Ankara would proceed, given the Karabakh condition it placed on the ratification and implementation of the protocols.
This appears to leave him with few options. He is either going to have to take steps that will be construed in Turkey as “selling out” Azerbaijan, or remain true his promise to Baku, which will merely create the impression that he is fooling the international community.
Neither is it clear what kind of “electricity” will be generated from Erdoğan’s meeting with President Sarkisian next week, given his ability to be highly abrasive, as evidenced by his continued salvoes at Israel.
It must also be mentioned here that the U.S. and the EU do not accept the link Erdoğan has established between normalization of ties with Armenia and the Karabakh issue. Russia has also said this link is artificial.
The same applies to Turkey’s interpretation of the Armenian constitutional court’s ruling. The general international attitude here is to accept the court’s ruling that the protocols are in compliance with the constitution at face value.
Given this overall situation, one can also assume that the motive of the Armenian parliament in debating the Zurich protocols is a calculated move to apply pressure on Turkey. Given that Armenian nationalists in the diaspora and at home are totally against these protocols, it seems the intention here is to put pressure on Turkey.
It is not hard to see that the government in Yerevan takes it for granted that the Turkish Parliament will not ratify the protocols before there is serious movement on the Karabakh issue. But no one expects serious movement on that issue anytime soon, so the political risk appears less for Yerevan if it ratifies the protocols. Thus, the aim on the Armenian side appears to be to try and shift the stigma of “intransigence” onto Turkey.
But these are calculations that will not lead the sides anywhere in terms of normalizing their ties. As we have said on numerous occasions, this normalization can only come about through brave and committed leadership on both sides. Unfortunately, we do not see this at the present time.
Semih İdiz/Hurriyet Daily News
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