InternationalThe time is right
Published: Friday March 06, 2009
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Some people may think this is a brilliant plan: Let everyone keep quiet about the Armenian Genocide for a few months until the fragile process now underway between Turkey and Armenia bears results. Let Turkey agree to normalize relations with Armenia. Once that's done, the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress can quickly affirm the Armenian Genocide.
Alas, every aspect of that plan is flawed, beginning with the assumption that Turkey would go along with it.
Are we really at the brink of a new era in Armenian-Turkish relations? Is Turkey about to reopen the land border with Armenia, which - in an effort to suffocate Armenia - it has kept closed since 1993? Is it about to consent, at last, to establishing diplomatic relations with Armenia? Armenia has all along sought both outcomes, setting no preconditions.
Developments since last summer have raised hopes that Armenia and Turkey may normalize relations. Normal relations would, of course, be a highly desirable outcome.
The raising of hopes began last summer at the initiative of Armenia's then-new president. He invited his Turkish counterpart to Yerevan. Turkey's president accepted the invitation and spent six hours in the Armenian capital in September.
Since then, the foreign ministers of Armenia and Turkey have been suggesting that normalization is imminent.
The talk about normalization is helping Turkey with one of its foreign policy goals: heading off U.S. affirmation of the Armenian Genocide.
So we know that Turkey has a reason to talk about normalizing relations with Armenia. But the issue is whether it has convincing reasons to go beyond talk and actually open the border.
There are good reasons for it to do so.
First, in this global recession, the possibility of enhanced trade in Turkey's easternmost provinces is attractive. Second, by normalizing relations with Armenia, Turkey can enhance its stature as a regional power and a European state.
(A third reason does not survive scrutiny: The war in Georgia has made a case for developing alternative transit routes, but that would require Azerbaijan too to open its border with Armenia, which it will not do. Turkey already shares a border with Armenia's other immediate neighbors.)
If these reasons are persuasive for Turkey's leadership, then we hope it will proceed with the no-brainer steps it should have taken 15 years ago: open the border and exchange ambassadors with Armenia.
But the leaders of Turkey's governing AK Party have a problem: if they proceed with normalization of relations, they lose their excuse to hold off U.S. affirmation. Indeed, if Turkey agrees to normalize relations with Armenia before U.S. affirmation of the Armenian Genocide, it will do so only if it can have a new, compelling excuse to hold off U.S. affirmation. That would almost certainly be the formation of a commission by the governments of Armenia and Turkey to study the "thorny issues" of history and delay indefinitely the political act of affirmation.
That is a nonstarter. It's one thing for Armenia to establish relations with Turkey while Turkey denies the Armenian Genocide. Armenia can do that. It's another thing to ask Armenia to participate in that denial by treating the Genocide as an open question yet to be studied. That Armenia cannot do.
The United States can help with the normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations by moving quickly to affirm the Armenian Genocide. By doing so, the Obama administration and Congress would clear the way for talks between Armenia and Turkey that are not burdened with this issue.
It's time to contact members of the House of Representatives and urge them to co-sponsor the House resolution affirming the U.S. record on the Armenian Genocide. Tell them the time is right.
