IMPREGNABLE HEIGHT

Until recently the news about talks between the representatives of Armenia and Turkey held in Vienna would have sounded sensational. Today, however, it is practically a diplomatic routine. Azerbaijan's victory in the 44-day war has resulted in large-scale developments in the region, also pushing for dialogue between Armenia and Turkey.

Turkish Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the meeting between the special envoys for the normalisation of relations between Turkey and Armenia, ambassador Serdar Kilic and Ruben Rubinyan, deputy speaker of the Armenian parliament. It says the sides agreed to open the land border between Turkey and Armenia to third-country nationals, as well as to start direct cargo and air transport as soon as possible. It is reported that the parties have also discussed other possible steps to normalise relations.

Glass half empty or half full?

Apparently, the parties have outlined a roadmap, are working on concrete steps and generally demonstrate a willingness to agree.

But... it was not even about the refusal of Turkish authorities to grant the Armenian carrier Flyone an air passage to Beirut a week before the meeting in Vienna, which forced the company to cancel its flights to the capital of Lebanon and promise to pay compensation or exchange tickets. So, it was at least not surprising that after so many years of hostility, reconciliation could not have gone smoothly.

It is important however that the present talks cover a road map, protocols of intentions and so on, but not concrete steps. Just before the start of the talks in Vienna, Special Envoy Ruben Rubinyan told the members of the parliament that he did not see much progress in the negotiation process with Ankara. Moreover, he said that no specific document was being discussed with the Turkish side during the talks.

This fact is a serious reason to question whether it is realistic to expect a quick and ambitious breakthrough in the negotiations.

Perhaps this is not the end of the story, as Rubinyan has left the main difficulties behind the scenes simply because it is risky enough to voice them in Armenia.

Dialogue minus Garabagh

Thanks to one of the popular stereotypes emerged in the last thirty years, thanks also to Yerevan's lamentations, it has been believed that Turkey "held Armenia under siege" and refused to open the border with it. In fact, Ankara has made no secret that it did not have any intention to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia and open the border as long as there were Armenian occupants on Azerbaijani lands. Yet Armenia did not hesitate to call this decision a ‘blockade of Armenia’.

But now, after Azerbaijan's victory in the 44-day war, when Azerbaijan liberated its lands militarily, or rather militarily and politically, there is no more obstacle to the normalisation of relations between Armenia and Turkey, such as the occupation of Azerbaijani territories, which many experts considered to be almost the key impeding factor. At the same time, Baku makes it clear that it is not against the dialogue between Ankara and Yerevan, while the former coordinates the course of negotiations with Azerbaijan. Baku also regularly puts forward initiatives to create regional formats that would include Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey.

There is also an economic component. It has been said many times that without normalising relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey, Armenia cannot expect its economy to revive. The stakes are really high for Yerevan. It is enough to recall the shock of the Armenian political leadership with the situation at Yerevan’s Zvartnots international airport when the flights between Yerevan and Moscow were resumed after a long pause due to the pandemic—it looked like another Kabul airport. Experts understand perfectly well that Armenian citizens are fleeing primarily because of economic problems. It seems that Yerevan has a simple and clear plan of action: to normalise relations with Ankara and Baku as quickly as possible. Moreover, if Azerbaijan and Turkey can do well perfectly well without Armenia, as the economic dynamics of the region have proved over the past quarter century, it will be difficult if not impossible for Armenia to survive without normal relations with economically stronger neighbours.

In the meantime, the contradictions between Armenia and Turkey that have been pushed back since 1993 as a result of the Garabagh war now become steadily relevant. This is far more serious than it seems.

Shadow of the past

Even a simple list of the sore points between Ankara and Yerevan, let alone a detailed analysis of them, would go far beyond the scope of this article. What can be called both existential fears and anti-Turkish hysteria have been fuelled in Armenia for at least a hundred years. Much has been said and written about the ‘massacres’ and ‘Armenian genocide’, the glorification of terrorists who attacked Turkish diplomats in European and US cities in the 1970s and 1980s, the cult of hatred and enmity. Yet there is another issue that has been paid less attention to—Armenia has yet to recognise Turkey in its current borders and renounce its claims to the Turkish territory.

These claims peaked during the First World War, when the plan to "drive the Ottomans into Konya" was to create the so-called Western Armenia on the Eastern Anatolia. These were not just plans discussed in private offices behind closed doors, but were reflected in the Treaty of Sèvres and US President Woodrow Wilson's ‘Arbitral Award’ on Turkish-Armenian boundary. Further events are well known: the Turkish War of Independence, the victory of Mustafa Kemal before he was called Atatürk, liberation of Eastern Anatolia and Izmir, forced revision of post-war borders of the former Ottoman Empire, now the Republic of Turkey, signing of the Kars and Moscow treaties... There are few nations which have been ‘cheated’ so aggressively by the leading European politicians. Nansen had every reason to say the following: "Woe to the Armenian people dragged into European politics! It would have been better if no European diplomat had uttered that name.”

Then following events took an interesting turn. On the one hand, Armenia was part of the USSR, and the Soviet Union signed border treaties with Turkey back in the 1920s—the Kars and Moscow treaties. On the other hand, the USSR preferred to keep the map of territorial claims to Turkey up its sleeve, hence allowing Soviet Armenia to have Mount Ararat (Aghri-Dagh) on its coat of arms, thus denoting a claim to Eastern Anatolia. Similarly, the myth of the so-called Armenian genocide has also been promoted during the Soviet years. There is a monument to its ‘victims’ in Yerevan, with a clear allusion to the same Aghri-Dagh and Western Armenia. It is hardly coincidental that with the collapse of the USSR, Turkey officially expressed concern that Armenia might lay claim to its territory.

The Armenian diaspora played an instrumental role in this process. Well, for ethnic Armenians strolling through the Champs-Elysées or sitting on the balconies of their villas in California and admiring the panorama of the Pacific Ocean it is easy to speculate about who should own Kars, Ardahan, Aghri-Dagh and Lake Van than for ordinary Armenians living in Armenia. As a result, both the political and cultural life of the diaspora revolved around the same set of themes: 'overcoming the consequences of genocide', the Sèvres Peace Treaty, Western Armenia, etc.

So, what about the border?

All this hysteria around the lands of Eastern Anatolia, which has left the lamentations on the ‘victims of genocide’ far behind, has created a rather ambiguous situation in the talks with Turkey. There seems to be a positive momentum in the negotiations today. But so far both sides have made the ‘reserved moves’, which allow them to demonstrate success without touching upon the main issue, that is the recognition of borders. For obvious reasons, Turkey does not intend to give its territory to Armenia. But will Armenia have the political will and determination to denounce its territorial claims, which for decades have been elevated to the rank of almost the main national issue? Does this mean they will take the image of Aghri-Dagh off their coat of arms?

Armenia is  long overdue to bury its dead ambitions and stop living with the hundred-years-old passions. But we have yet to know whether Yerevan politicians are ready for this move. Especially considering the Armenian traditions of political terror and the presence of radical forces.  This means that the success of the dialogue between Ankara and Yerevan is still under question.