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Turkey and Armenia: Settling Differences not Scores

By Patricia H. Kushlis

When all is said and done, it took less than six weeks of tough quiet negotiations under the watchful eyes and steady hands of experienced Swiss mediators for the Turkish and Armenian governments to sit down and hammer out certain differences that had been festering for years between the two contentious neighbors.  Some would argue the antagonisms had been poisoning Black Sea waters for nearly a century.

Will it be smooth sailing from here on in?  No.  Certainly not. This is already evident.   But the agreement between the two protagonists signed on October 10, 2009 in Zurich is an important first step.

 Sometime last year each government must have decided that it was in its own self-interest to try to settle outstanding differences with the other rather than continue the feud ad infinitum ala Hatfields and McCoys to their mutual disadvantage. 

 The accord which the two parties signed at the University of Zurich establishes diplomatic relations between the two countries for the first time in nearly 100 years - with the hope of reopening the border that the Turks closed in 1993 and ending a century of acrimony over a bloody past.

In concrete terms, the agreement confirms the border established in 1921 between Turkey and Russia as the border between today’s Turkey and Armenia and sets up regular political consultations between the foreign ministries of Turkey and Armenia.

The agreement also has the support of the major international parties interested in seeing that a rapprochement works.

In fact, the way the signing ceremony transpired, the event itself seemed almost like a shot-gun wedding with the outside “guarantor” powers present to ensure the ceremony actually took place. Foreign Ministers from the US, Russia, France and the EU were all in attendance.  For the agreement to become legal, however, it still needs the approval of both Turkish and Armenian parliaments.

And despite the noise on the streets from the ultra-nationalists on both sides intent upon derailing it, this minimalist framework is expected – fingers crossed - to obtain the necessary parliamentary approvals.  This is mandatory for it to become legal.

Tit-for-tat diplomacy

Yes, there’s lots more that needs to happen.  At the top of the list are the thorny issues of Armenian troops still stationed in neighboring Azerbaijan near Nagorno-Karabakh – an Armenian enclave in the middle of this Turkic speaking, oil-rich, Muslim Caucasian neighbor and the opening of the border between Turkey and Armenia which the Turks closed in retaliation for the Armenian invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh in 1993.  The resolution of these two contentious issues – the Turks say – is inseparable.  This is known as tit-for-tat diplomacy.

Keeping Georgia On Our Mind

By Asbed Kotchikian, Guest Contributor

Asbed Kotchikian is a lecturer at the Global Studies Department at Bentley University specializing in the politics of identity, foreign policy as well as political processes in the Middle East and the South Caucasus. He frequently travels to both regions (most recently in July 2009).

Two weeks ago, Tbilisi announced its withdrawal from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) over a year after the war between Russia and Republic of Georgia. The CIS was created on December 8, 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union to “ease” the separation of the 13 republics (the Baltic countries refused to join) and provide Russia with a new vehicle to keep its cultural, economic political and military oversight over its former “colonies.”  In other words, the formation of the CIS retained 12 non-Russian republics in Russia’s sphere of influence.

Not so Recent Background

Georgia’s enrollment in the CIS was not a decision made under “normal” circumstances. Thus in 1994 (the year Georgia’s then President Eduard Shevardnadze signed the agreement with Russia that brought Georgia into the CIS), the followers of the ousted Georgian president Zviad Gamsakhurdia were gaining ground in a civil war that had threatened to throw Georgia into an abyss of failed statehood. Not long after the signing of the CIS treaty, the Georgian army began to gain ground against the Zviadist rebels. Soon thereafter, Russian “peacekeepers” landed in western Georgia to help quell the rebellion and consolidate Shevardnadze’s authority.

Georgia’s entry into the CIS came with tremendous hesitation and mistrust. From the Georgian perspective, the CIS was nothing more than a new version of the Russian attempt to colonize the “near abroad” (the term that many Russians used to designate the former Soviet and now independent republics). However, in the face of imminent collapse of the country into a disorganized and dysfunctional entity, accepting Russian protection became the only way out for the continuation of Georgia as a viable state. This “alliance” – which from the Georgian standpoint - was not based on free choice, was an important reason for the subsequent tension between the two countries, since it provided Russia with a mechanism and the tools to limit Georgia’s attempts to conduct a foreign policy distinct from that of Moscow.

Russia also retained a heavy military presence in Georgia (under the guise of CIS peace-keeping forces) acting as a buffer between Georgia forces on the one hand and separatist Abkhaz and South Ossetians on the other. In 1994, then Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev stated that “the Russian military presence in Georgia was vital to ensure a stabilization of the situation, to protect the rights of Russian speakers, and to help Georgia establish its own armed forces.”

Behind the “August war”

On August 7, 2008, Tbilisi embarked on a large scale military operation to retake the breakaway and unrecognized republic of South Ossetia.

Turkey and the Armenian Question: That was then, this is now

By Patricia H. Kushlis

On Friday afternoon April 24, traffic was slower than normal on Washington's Massachusetts Avenue in front of the Turkish Embassy. Across the street, some 25-50 demonstrators waved Armenian flags, shouted angry slogans and held up home-made placards demanding that the Turkish Government recognize as genocide the massacre of Armenians that began in 1915. It was as if those tragic historic events had happened just yesterday. I saw two Greek – not Cypriot - flags in the smallish crowd but no reasons stated for Greek participation.

The Armenian opposite numbers stood on the sidewalk in front of the Turkish Embassy waving Turkish flags and carrying signs proclaiming that what had happened to the Armenians was part of a larger civil war occurring in the then crumbling Ottoman Empire and not a deliberate campaign by the Ottoman rulers or the Turks, the Empire’s successors, to eradicate all Armenians.

Last year the US Congress came within inches of championing the Armenian view on this still firestorm of an issue.

That was last year