A BRIDGE TO NOWHERE

Diplomats and political experts can be notoriously sceptical, or even cynical. They are not fond of  illusions, rainbow projects or castles in the air. However, sometimes there is a burst of high hopes within a specific circle of political experts and active diplomats.

The catastrophic earthquake in Türkiye and the international aid to Ankara is an example of this. Azerbaijan was the first country to lend a helping hand to brotherly Türkiye. Baku dispatched the largest number of rescuers, modular houses, field hospitals and large quantities of humanitarian aid. Almost all cargo aircraft of Azerbaijan's Silk Way have been involved in the humanitarian operation. By the way, it is one of the largest cargo carriers in the region with a solid fleet. Israel, the US and Qatar have provided large assistance to Türkiye...

Remarkably, among the aiding countries, there were also those that would hardly have been called friendly to Ankara before. As expected, Türkiye found itself in the spotlight of the global expert community. The EU aid campaign for Ankara was instigated by Sweden—the same country whose relations with Türkiye were on edge after the outrageous and shameful action of burning the Qur’an in Stockholm. One of the first to help Türkiye was also Greece, whose relations with the former have been strained again in recent years. The expert community recalled 1999 when Türkiye and Greece were hit by a series of earthquakes. At that time the mutual aid between Athens and Ankara helped to ease tensions; the cooperation was soon dubbed as a ‘quake diplomacy’, which would be more accurate to call a humanitarian diplomacy.

Armenia also dispatched humanitarian aid and rescuers to the earthquake-stricken regions of Türkiye. About a week later, this was followed by the Armenian foreign minister Ararat Mirzoyan’s visit to Ankara. He held talks with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu and then visited the city of Adiyaman, where he personally opened the doors of trucks with humanitarian aid arriving from Armenia and met Armenian rescuers.

Humanitarian diplomacy: hopes and reality

As expected, the picture with truckloads of humanitarian aid from Armenia crossing the border with Türkiye closed for three decades found its way into the spotlight of journalists, diplomats and politicians. USAID head Samantha Power wrote on Twitter: "So moving to see decades of animosity set aside to help people in desperate need. For the first time in 35 years, a border crossing between Armenia and Türkiye has been opened so aid can reach earthquake victims."

EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the Crisis in Georgia Toivo Klaar praised Mirzoyan's visit to Türkiye on Twitter as well (sic): "This is a historic visit following Armenian decision to support its neighbour in need. Hopefully a harbinger of developments to come in the Turkish-Armenian relationship."

Cavusoglu and Mirzoyan also made rather optimistic statements. Armenian foreign minister assured that his country was ready to establish peace in the region, open the border and restore diplomatic relations. And his Turkish counterpart noted that he had agreed with Mirzoyan to continue working on the normalisation process.

Most importantly, Türkiye's aggression against Azerbaijan and the occupation of Azerbaijani territories are no longer impeding the normalisation of relations between Türkiye and Armenia. After all, two years ago Azerbaijan liberated its lands militarily with a convincing victory. There are agreements to repair the Silk Road Bridge near the ruins of Ani, the next "ancient capital of Armenia" according to Yerevan. This is certainly not a historical breakthrough, but as we know, “the longest road begins with the first step”.

A bridge to the future... or to nowhere?

For almost three decades, the main obstacle to the normalisation of relations between Armenia and Türkiye has been Armenia's aggression against Azerbaijan. Türkiye, the first country to recognise all fifteen former Soviet republics, refused to establish diplomatic relations with Yerevan or open the border until Armenia withdrew its troops from Azerbaijani lands. Yerevan resisted, but Ankara signalled that it would wait.

Now, after the victory in the 44-day war, Azerbaijan advocates the normalisation of relations between all the countries of the region and even proposes negotiation formats such as 3+3. But experts warn that we may now see contradictions and problems between Türkiye and Armenia come into focus, excluding the already resolved issue of Garabagh.

And there are plenty of contradictions, in fact, the most prominent one being the events of 1915, which Yerevan demands to be treated as a genocide of Armenians. Türkiye has opened its archives and proposes that Armenia set up a joint commission of historians to study the issue, but Yerevan is unwilling to hear anything and demands repentance from Türkiye without investigation. In Armenia, terrorists who murdered Turkish diplomats are elevated to the rank of national heroes; there are monuments to the "first-generation" Armenian terrorists, as well as streets and educational institutions named after such characters. It is enough to mention the cult of Monte Melkonian.

However, the most dangerous of Armenian claims is undoubtedly the territorial one: Armenia continues to lay claims to six eastern Anatolian vilayets. However, the Yerevan officials do not dare to voice this in the international arena, but they can always do so within Armenia. Despite all the talk about the need for peace and normalisation of relations, Yerevan is in no hurry to recognise Türkiye's current borders.

Back in 1991, Türkiye was concerned that Armenia might make territorial claims to it. After all, a border in limbo is always a potential trigger for war, especially given the number of previous cases with Armenia. Little poor Armenia was hardly a threat to Türkiye, but it was a member of the CSTO. Türkiye was a member of NATO. So the echoes of the First World War could easily trigger the Third World War.

Today, the success of dialogue between Türkiye and Armenia depends above all on whether Yerevan is ready to give up its territorial claims against Ankara.

The territorial trigger was evident during the so-called football diplomacy of 2008-2009, which involved a number of unprecedented events as well. Turkish President Abdullah Gül travelled to Yerevan to attend a football game between the Armenian and Turkish national teams. Soon afterwards, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan paid a return visit to Türkiye. Foreign ministers of both countries signed protocols on the normalisation of relations in Zurich. But... the football diplomacy ended up going nowhere. Mainly due to the decision of the Constitutional Court of Armenia, which ruled that Yerevan had the right to seek territorial reparations from Ankara for the notorious Armenian genocide.

Time to give up the shadows of the past

We live in the twenty-first century and Armenia is no longer part of the USSR, but an independent state that needs normal relations with its neighbours in the first place. It seems today is the right time for the Armenian leadership to abandon the shadows of the past, to stop living in the ideas and dreams of a century ago, and to start building good neighbourly relations with Türkiye and Azerbaijan.

But first and foermost, this will require overcoming a huge inertia of public opinion, not only and not so much in Armenia itself but also in the Armenian diaspora. While the Armenian authorities are sending positive signals, the diaspora is still speculating about the ownership of Kars, Ardahan, Bitlis and Diyarbakir, mostly without thinking of the military, economic and human cost of these claims for small and weak Armenia.

Secondly, Yerevan should not forget that the process of Turkish-Armenian normalisation must go hand in hand with the development of post-war peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan; Ankara continues to remind them of this.

However, in order to overcome the hesitancy of Armenian society and the diaspora, as well as the influence of interested external players, Armenia needs an influential authority in the first place. But this is where Armenia has problems that were also evident at the recent Munich conference during a panel discussion on security in the South Caucasus that included both Ilham Aliyev and Nikol Pashinian. There was no talk of Türkiye here. However, Pashinian, like in the last debate in 2020, did not give the impression of a man ready to pursue a real peace agenda. And he is unlikely to take responsibility and sign a treaty that implies abandoning the Armenian people's age-old dream of Turkish lands.

This means that the bridge on the border between Armenia and Türkiye still leads nowhere.