Deadlock Official

Armenia's ruling coalition announced this morning that the protocols signed with Turkey are stalled, and that it is up to Turkey to take further action. Essentially, according to the Armenians, the ball is in Turkey's court. The announcement, coming just two days before President Obama will commemorate the large-scale massacre of Armenians under Ottoman rule in 1915, can be read as an attempt to up the ante in Washington. In its statement, the ruling coalition described Turkey's linkage of the Protocols' ratification with progress on Nagorno-Karabakh as unacceptable. For the full text of the statement, click here. Turkey, for its part, continues to insist that the Armenian constitutional court decision delivered last February also puts acceptable preconditions on the Protocols, hindering their full implementation (namely, on the point of the "historical commission"). From Prime Minister Erdogan's response to the Armenian statement, it does not look as if the statement will make Turkey budge, nor should it have been expected to -- probably owing more to a desire to influence Washington, than Turkey. Some speculated that the two sides had made progress at the nuclear summit in Washington last week, but clearly there is a long way to go. For background, see past posts.


UPDATE I (4/23) -- Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan addressed the Armenian public last night. Bianet has the summary. For the United States' response, click here.

UPDATE II (4/27) -- The International Crisis Group (ICG)'s Sabine Frazier has written an excellent short analysis of the stalled agreement. From the piece:

In spring 2009, Baku's leadership began to appeal not only to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan but also to the Turkish opposition to keep the border shut until its occupied territories were liberated. It threatened Turkey's preferential price for its Shah Deniz natural gas supplies and chances of greater volume to feed the planned Nabucco transit pipeline to Europe. In January of this year, for the first time, Azerbaijan provided significant amounts of gas to Russia. Popular mood against Turkey hardened in Baku, with official support and even puppets of Turkey's leaders being burned in some protests.

Turkish leaders decided that they could not ignore Azerbaijani pressure and with difficult negotiations going on concerning constitutional reform, they do not want to pick a fight over border opening with nationalists in the parliamentary opposition -- and within their own ruling party. Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan made increasingly unambiguous statements that without progress on settling the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the border would not open, even though this was the strategy applied by Ankara since 1993 with little conflict resolution effect.

In the past several months Turkey did succeed in contributing to reinvigorating efforts to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict under the aegis of the OSCE Minsk Group. Armenia and Azerbaijan are closer than ever to signing the agreement on basic principles that they have been considering since 2005. But they have not narrowed their differences on the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh. While there has been some movement on defining an “interim status” for the entity, Armenia insists that it should have the right to self determination including secession from Azerbaijan, while Azerbaijan says that its territorial integrity cannot be violated.

The Armenian government also did little over the past several months to reaffirm its commitment to difficult aspects of the protocols. Rather it tried to distance itself from the establishment of a committee on the historical dimension “including an impartial scientific examination of the historical records and archives.” For Armenians such a commission is generally perceived as a fundamental violation of their very national identity. They don't accept that “the genocide fact” can be discussed. Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan made this most clear in an April interview to Der Spiegel criticizing the idea of a historical commission as “calling into question the fact of the genocide perpetrated against our people.”

Both the Armenian and Turkish leadership comes out of the past months weakened. Armenian President Sarksyan has been heavily criticized by his opposition for making too many concessions to the Turkish side, believing that the border could open despite Azerbaijan's firm opposition and losing a realistic chance in 2009 that US President Barack Obama would state that he recognized the mass killings and deportations of Ottoman Armenians 1915 as genocide. The Armenian parliamentary decision is a victory for the more hard-line Armenian diaspora and a defeat of Armenian sovereign foreign policy making.

UPDATE I (4/23) -- The Global Post's Nichole Sobecki has an informative piece up on the Turkey-Armenia rapprochement, in which a variety of voices may be heard. The piece also has some striking photography of Van, where many Armenians used to reside before the deporations/massacres.

UPDATE II (4/27) -- Eurasia Daily Monitor analyst Vladimir Socor has put out an insightful piece criticizing the logic of the Obama Administration's approach to the Protocols. An excerpt:

Since April 2009, US President, Barack Obama’s administration has pressed for opening Turkey’s border with Armenia unconditionally Thus, the October 2009 Zurich protocols, strongly backed by the US, required Turkey to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia and open the mutual border “without preconditions.”

Washington’s policy seems driven primarily by domestic politics. The administration hopes to remove the annual drama of Armenian genocide recognition from the center-stage of US politics. It seeks its way out of the dilemma of losing Turkey versus any loss of the US Armenian vote. “Normalization” of Turkish-Armenian relations, centered on the re-opening of that border, was offered as a substitute for the unfulfilled electoral-campaign promises to recognize an Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey.

Washington’s normalization concept, however, has also turned out to be unfulfilled. Tilting sharply in Armenia’s favor at Azerbaijan’s expense, it backfired first in Azerbaijan and shortly afterward in Turkey. Instead of de-aligning Ankara from Baku, as seemed briefly possible, it led Turkey and Azerbaijan to close ranks against an unconditional “normalization” of Turkish-Armenian relations, prior to a first-stage withdrawal of Armenian troops from Azerbaijan.

The US initiative seemed unrelated to any regional strategy in the South Caucasus. It actually coincided with an overall reduction of US engagement in that region, downgrading the earlier goals of conflict-resolution and promotion of energy projects. Moreover, it risked splitting its strategic partner Azerbaijan from Turkey, compromising the basis for a subsequent return to an active US policy in the region.

. . . .

The logic of the administration’s initiative from 2009 to date has implied that Washington would “deliver” the re-opening of Turkey’s border with Armenia; while Turkey would in turn “deliver” Azerbaijan by opening the Turkish-Armenian border, without insisting on the withdrawal of Armenian troops from inner-Azeri territories. That conditionality is a long-established one in these negotiations. However, Washington currently insists that the two processes be separated and that Turkey opens that border unconditionally as per the October 2009 Zurich protocols.

Breaking that linkage would irreparably compromise the chances of a peaceful, stage-by-stage settlement of the Armenian-Azeri conflict. It would indefinitely prolong the Armenian military presence inside Azerbaijan, placing Russia in a commanding position to arbitrate the conflict, with unprecedented leverage on an Azerbaijan alienated from its strategic allies.

While Washington was surely not expecting such a strong response from Azerbaijan (see Jan. 24 post), it is now all the more clear that a rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey must involve Azerbaijan, taking into account the concerns and interests of all parties involved. While it is perhaps possible to criticize Turkey for placing preconditions on the Protocols, it is also possible to criticize the United States and Europe for not adequately taking into account the amount of pressure Azerbaijan is able to exert over Turkey. Turkey might well "deliver" Azerbaijan, but only if the Azeris are made part of the process. The Obama Administration's exclusion of Azerbaijan from the nuclear summit in Washington on April 12-13 marked a continuation of this oversight, and it is only hoped that the United States will amend its logic in the future.

UPDATE III (5/8) -- Yigal Schleifer gives another good account of the breakdown of the rapproachment at the Eurasianet website.

The Resolution Saga Continues, Erdogan Points to "Jewish Lobby"

Prime Minister Erdogan said today that Ankara has no plans to send Turkish Ambasador to the United States Namik Tan back to Washington until it receives a clear signal that the resolution is dead. On Friday, the Obama Administration announced that it had reached a deal with American congressional leaders that would stop the resolution in its tracks. However, for Ankara, this is apparently not enough. Upon Tan's return this week, the government continued to issue strong rhetoric, for which there is no doubt a public demand. Fighting "genocide" resolutions is one of the few things that pulls otherwise polarized Turkish politicans together. Suat Kiniklioglu, the AKP's deputy chairman for external affairs, threatened major consequences" should the resolution pass the full United States House of Representatives.

Provocatively, the prime minister pointed his finger at Washington's Israel lobby. (Hurriyet Daily News refers to the Israel lobby as the "Jewish lobby," a term the prime minister also presumably used, but which is inaccurate.) Erdogan said the attitude of Israel lobbyists had changed. While this is indeed the case, it is not accurate to say the Israel lobby "supported" the resolution; rather, they did nothing to stop it, in some cases possibly giving a greenlight to members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who otherwise might have voted against the resolution (see, for example, the positon of the Anti-Defamation League and the use of the resolution by AIPAC and other organizations to pressure Turkey on its position on Iran and Gaza). From Washington-based journalist Jim Lobe in the Asia Times:

In 2007, the Foreign Affairs committee approved a similar "genocide" resolution. However, it was never referred to the floor of the house due to intense opposition by the administration of president George W Bush backed by the powerful "Israel Lobby", which has frequently intervened in congress on Turkey’s behalf since the late 1980s when Ankara and Israel began building a strategic alliance.

But Israeli-Turkish ties have become increasingly strained in recent years, particularly since Israel's "Cast Lead" military campaign in Gaza, which Erdogan strongly denounced in a heated exchange with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum in late January last year, just days after the offensive had ended.

A number of subsequent incidents, most recently the apparently deliberate televised humiliation in January by Israel's deputy foreign minister of Ankara's ambassador in Tel Aviv, have added to the strains.

Indeed, some analysts in the US and in Turkey suggested that the resolution's passage was due as much to the Israel Lobby's failure to oppose it, as to the Obama administration's delay in coming out against it. Several key lawmakers who are considered close to the Lobby, notably Gary Ackerman, Brad Sherman and committee chair Howard Berman, spoke in favor of its approval.

"In the past, the pro-Israel community has lobbied hard against previous attempts to pass similar resolutions, citing warnings from Turkish officials that it could harm the alliance not only with the United States but with Israel ...," noted the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday.

"In the last year or so, however, officials of American pro-Israel groups have said that while they will not support new resolutions, they will no longer oppose them, citing Turkey's heightened rhetorical attacks on Israel and a flourishing of outright anti-Semitism the government has done little to stem," it asserted.

And, for a look at the victors of Thursday's vote, see Omer Taspinar's column in Today's Zaman. According to Taspinar, Armenian lobbyists (who want to stay in business) and Azerbaijan (which wants to see no rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia until Nagorno-Karabakh is settled) won significant points Thursday. With the protocols now dead in the water, the resolution is likely to keep coming up, and lobbyists will be there to push for and pull against it. Azerbaijan had already successfully appealed/threatened the Turkish government to tie Nagorno-Karabakh to ratification, and the deal is most certainly imperiled. I would also add Turkish ultra-nationalists and anti-American elements inside Turkey to the list of winners as both groups successfully used the resolution in appeals to their core groups. The Turkish government is claiming the resolution has greatly damaged ratification in Turkey.

For more talk in Washington, see former Ambassador to Turkey Mort Abramowitz's interview with the Center for American Progress' Middle East Progress, especially on the status of the protocols. According to Abramowitz, the Turkish government did not adequately prepare for Azeri opposition, instead hoping something would come from American and Russian efforts to settle Nagorno-Karabakh. For Abramowitz, the "real question is can the Turks move forward without doing something for the Azeris?" For my analysis of the Turkey-Armenia-Azerbaijan triangle, which the protocols should have done more to take into account from the beginning, see Jan. 24 post.

Armenia (Continued . . .)

The spat about the Armenian Constitutional Court ruling on the ratification of the Protocols hoped to be signed between Turkey and Armenia continues with no end in sight. Since the court decision, Turkey has seemed to focus its argumentative energy on the historical commision the Protocols would establish. While it was unclear from the beginning just what such a commission would look like, the Turkish government claims that the Armenian Constitutional Court's reference to a specific article of the Armenian Declaration of Independence hinders the implications of the Protocols. The article in question reads that Armenia will not retreat from its position that the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 constituted a genocide.

However, long before the Armenian Constitutional Court decision, Turkey had tried to link the Protocols to settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Prime Minister Erdogan explicitly linking the two matters when he met with President Obama in Washington in December. While some analysts maintain that Turkey is merely looking for a way to get out of the Protocols, especially following the angry response from Azerbaijan, Turkish diplomats continue to reiterate their support for the process and have asked Swiss mediators, as well as the United States, to provide written assurance that the Armenian Constitutional Court's decision will not place impediments on the proposed historical commission to discuss what happened in 1915. So far, Switzerland and the United States have said they have no intention to do so, and that the Armenian court decision in no way impedes implementation of the Protocols. The United States, in particular, has lauded the Armenian Constitutional Court decision for moving the process forward, characterizing Turkey's responses as "exaggerated." Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has been trying to persuade Washington otherwise, so far holding talks with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State James Seteinberg, National Security Advisor James Jones, and Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Turkish government has expressed that it feels pressured by the United States, and these accusations of undue meddling only increased with news that the House Foreign Affairs Committee is set to take up consideration of yet another resolution calling for President Obama to recognize 1915 as a genocide. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman said the committee will consider the resolution in early March, in time for it to moved to the House floor for a vote before April 15, the day on which the start of the massacres is memorialized and on which Obama will or will not name the event a "genocide."

Armenian President Serge Sarkisian called on Turkey last week to expedite the ratification process, asking President Gul to help overcome the opposition and clear the way for a vote by the Turkish Parliament. Prime Minister Erdogan, who commands a majority in Parliament, has not moved to put the issue forward; meanwhile, Armenia has threatened to annul the process should Turkey not move forward. Pressure from the Armenian opposition will only increase as April 24 approaches, and though Sarkisian has a solid majority in the Armenian parliament, he is in a much less tenable political position than Erdogan. Armenian opposition figures are insisting that the Protocols are merely an excuse for President Obama to yet again refrain from calling 1915 a "genocide," and that the Protocols are a diplomatic convenience for the United States president to eschew the genocide issue. The Armenian parliament is also preparing legislation to allow the president to remove his signature from international treaties.

There is also plenty of pressuring from Azerbaijan. Azeri Ilham President Aliyev has expressed his confidence that Turkey would not ratify the treaty without the Nagorno-Karabakh link. Aliyev has repeated old threats that he could direct gas away from Turkey and toward Russia, which has promised to buy as much gas from Azerbaijan as it can supply. Meanwhile, Armenia played up its ties with Iran this week, concluding deals to build a transnational railway and energy facilities with the Iranians, a move speculated to strengthen Armenia's hand and pressure the United States not to call on Armenia to make additional concessions.

Things Fall Apart

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian and Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu in Zurich in October. PHOTO from Hürriyet

As the chances for ratification of two protocols signed between Turkey and Armenia crumble, the future of the rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia looks quite dim. The protocols were signed it Zurich in October, where both countries agreed to normalize diplomatic and bilateral relations, including opening the border and setting up numerous subcommissions, the most important of which would look at the "historical dimensions" betweent the two countries. However, Turkey has since made Turkish ratification contingent upon resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict despite making it clear in Zurich that ratification of the protocols would not be contingent on settling the rather intractable conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Prime Minister Erdogan has also stated that Armenia should remove its troops from the 13 percent of the territory it occupies inside Azerbaijan before borders are opened.

Nagorno-Karabakh

Turkey's position changed as its relations with Azerbaijan grew increasingly endangered after Zurich. Azerbaijan fears Turkey will sell it out on Nagorno-Karabakh, and opposes any Turkish rapprochement with Armenia before the conflict between it and Armenia is resolved. Armenians in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan revolted in 1993 with the assistance of Armenia, shortly after which Armenia essentially occupied. Following Armenia's invasion, Ankara broke off diplomatic relations with Yerevan and sealed the border. In addition to Armenia's campaign for genocide recognition, Nagorno-Karabakh has long been at the heart of tensions between it and Turkey.

Tensions with Azerbaijan had been high since the Turkey-Armenia rapprochement commenced in fall 2008, reaching a boiling point soon Zurich when President Gul appeared alongside Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan at a football game in Bursa. For public relations purposes, Turkish fans were prevented from entering the stadium with Azeri flags to protest the recent accords. Images of Turkish soldiers confiscating the flags in a none too delicate manner were aired on Azeri television, and a diplomatic splat soon blew up between Turkey and Azerbaijan, long considered "two states, but one nation." Soon after, Azerbaijan removad Turkish flags at a monument honoring Turkish soldiers who had died in Azerbaijan's 1918 independence war. In addition to fears surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan resents the price it receives for the natural gas sold to Turkey. The two countries remain in protracted negotiations over the issue.

The Turks are not without fears of their own. They fear increased ties between Russia and Azerbaijan, which include a recently signed major energy agreement providing or the sale of Azeri gas to Russia. Turkey needs Azeri gas in order to complete its plans for the Nabucco pipeline, and the more gas sold to Russia means the less gas for Turkey. Even worse would be a pipelines connecting Azeri gas to Russian supply routes, which Azerbaijan has used well to help terrify Turkey into submission. Russia has not proved instrumental to the peace process to the extent that it has done little to quell these fears, signing the energy accord in the heat of Turkey-Azerbaijan tensions.

All of this has led Turkey to look for the fastest exit route. Having introduced the Protcols to Parliament, Erdogan has declared his part done. Though Turkey stated at Zurich it could not guarantee ratification, the new conditions make it virtually impossible. Also important to note, Erdogan's ruling AKP controls a majority that could easily pave the way for ratification should the government be so

Fighting Over History

At the same time, Turkey and Armenia have very different visions of what a historical commission would look like: the Turks see it as an opportunity to open up discussion on the killing and insert more context into a debate of historical events that for many Armenians is shortly and simply understood as a state-planned campaign to exterminate them; meanwhile, the Armenians envision the commission as discussing relations post-1915. Concerns that discussion in such a commission would compromise the Armenian government's campaign for international recognition of the 1915 killings as genocide -- and, just as importantly, that of the Armenian diaspora -- have led to massive nationalist opposition in Armenia -- in which President Sargsyan's ruling party is less well-positioned than his Turkish counterpart. The nationalist opposition to the protocols has been tremendous, and drawn protests from the diaspora cross the world, most significantly in the United States.

Also disputed is the Turkish-Armenian border, premised on the 1921 Treaty of Kars. Armenian nationalists do not accept and bitterly resent the treaty, which was signed under pressure from the Russian government; the Armenian government, for its part, has never explicitly recognized the border.

Decision Time in Armenia

Turkey's exit strategy came on Jan. 13 when Armenia's Constitutional Court heard a challenge to the constitutionality of the protocols. While the Court affirmed them as legal, it seemed to place two important conditions on their implementation. The first of these involved the historical commission, which the Court ruled must not contradict Armenia's Declaration of Independence, which states that Armenia remain committed to its international genocide recognition campaign. The second involves a part of the Court's opinion that declares relations between the two countries must remain solely bilateral and not involve a third party. This would rule out Turkey's post-agreement demand that Nagorno-Karabakh be made part of the process.

Turkish nationalist opposition turned the court decision into political fodder. Soon after the Constitutional Court decision, the Turkish Ministry issued a statement declaring the conditions it establishes unacceptable. Perhaps more damaging is the Foreign Ministry's declaration of its sincerity as opposed to that of Armenia, Erdogan declaring that Turkey did not put the Protocols before its Constitutional Court. However, Erdogan clearly ignored that the Armenian government in power was not responsible for the constitutional challenge. Turkey, on the other hand, had said the protocols would not be conditional on Nagorno-Karabakh.

As of now, the future of the protocols appear dead in the water. Turkish experts have talked about trying to get Russia to pressure the Armenians, but as the International Crisis Group's Sabine Frazier lays out, the ball seems in Turkey's court. Should Armenia play its cards right, it could still pass the Protocols regardless of the conditions placed on them by its Constitutional Court. Since no specifics on the historical commission were ever determined and Nagorno-Karabakh intentionally not addressed, it will be hard for Turkey to cry foul, instead looking like the recalcitrant one at the end of the day. Such an appearance would make Turkey the diplomatic loser of a peace process some international observers could well say Turkish leaders were never serious about to begin with. Given that Turkey's problems with Azerbaijan are significant, and not unforeseeable, the real question seems to be why the Turkish government even initiated the process.

For a wonderful analysis of the issues at the heart of the Turkey-Armenia rapprochement, including the benefits for both countries, see the Balkans Project's excellent October interview with Nigar Goksel. Goksel also had an excellent interview with the Armenian Reporter in June where she elucidates conflict resoluton efforts at the societal level. For a more comprehensive history of the conflcit as it stood before the August and October agreements, see also the International Crisis Group's April 2009 briefing of Turkey-Armenia relations. And, not to overwhelm with links, but for a commentary by a Turk who is supportive of the process, but critical of Erdogan's charges of Armenian insincerity, see Milliyet columnist Semih Idiz's recent column.


UPDATE I (1/27) -- Responding to the Armenian Constitutional Court's decision, U.S Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon averred that the Court's decision does not place conditions on the Protocols as asserted by Prime Minister Erdogan and the Turkish Foreign Ministry. In a clarification of Gordon's remarks, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip J. Crowley echoed Gordon's remarks, confirming they were on the record and that the United States views the Court's decision as an advancement of Armenia's ratification of the Protocols, which will now be submitted to the Armenian Parliament for a vote.