DIVIDED BY a century of enmity, Armenia and Turkey took a significant step towards normalising relations on Saturday, when the two countries’ foreign ministers signed two protocols foreseeing a start to full diplomatic relations and the opening of a shared border closed since 1993.
But last-minute delays in the signing ceremony in Zurich and angry reactions from domestic opponents, Azerbaijan and the five million-strong Armenian diaspora suggest the road ahead will be far from easy.
Speaking to Turkey’s state-run TRT television on Sunday, Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu put the three-hour delay down to disagreements over the wording of statements after the signing ceremony.
After intensive lobbying from US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who was in Zurich for the ceremony, he and his Armenian counterpart Edouard Nalbantian agreed to make no statements at all.
Neither side has given details of the nature of the disagreement, but the points of tensions between the two sides are well known.
Unlike most historians, Turkey continues to insist that the murder of up to one million Ottoman Armenians in 1915 was the result of a civil war, not a planned genocide. Many Armenians see the protocol’s plans for a joint commission to investigate the events of 1915 as capitulation. “Do not sell our dead to the Turks,” read banners waved by a nationalist crowd in Yerevan on Saturday.
Turkey worries that opening Armenia’s border will end any incentive Armenia has to withdraw from parts of Azerbaijan that it occupied in the early 1990s at the cost of some 30,000 lives.
Related by religion and language to Azerbaijan, Turkey closed its Armenian border in protest at the occupation. Azeri opposition has already capsized plans to sign the protocols once, this April. Yesterday, the Azeri foreign ministry went on the offensive again, saying the deal was “in direct contradiction” to its national interests.
Turkish and Armenian parliaments now have to ratify the protocols. With Turkish nationalists describing Saturday as “a black day for Turkey”, prime minister Tayyip Erdogan reiterated calls yesterday for an acceleration of Azeri-Armenian talks.
Most analysts say that future hitches in the ratification process are likely to come from the Armenian side. In Turkey, the last five years have seen a radical reworking of the country’s traditionally cautious foreign policy. Taking Ahmet Davutoglu’s slogan of “no problems on our borders” as its base, the government has strengthened relations with Syria, Iran, Russia and Iraq’s Kurds, all former enemies.
It now also supports a solution on Cyprus, divided since Turkey invaded in 1974. The West strongly supports rapprochement, arguing that the growing regional clout of EU candidate member Turkey would increase stability in the volatile south Caucasus, an increasingly important westbound transit corridor for oil and gas.
“The more we can pull the bowstring into Asia, the further we can shoot the arrow into Europe,” Mr Davutoglu said yesterday.
“A Turkey which has no influence on its immediate neighbourhood cannot be a respected candidate in Europe.”