In the predictable fallout over the House Foreign Affairs Committee passage of HR252, the “Armenian Genocide Resolution”, last week, contrary rhetoric has retorted itself into an irritant popularly expressed but shallow in concept.

Yerevan, Armenia ain’t Washington, D.C., any more than this newsroom is a Congressional Committee hall.

But in the world we live in here, most accept what nobody, there, is saying. This:

“Normalization” talks between Armenia and Turkey, failed quite a while before a late-afternoon vote in D.C. had congresspersons talking about that possibility.

Not since last October, when State Department led “protocols” offered promises that soon became impossible to fulfill, has there been reasonable belief that Armenia and Turkey were skipping hand in hand on a yellow brick road to lollipops and Technicolor dreams.

Editor’s note: Tony Halpin is a founder of ArmeniaNow. He is currently Moscow bureau chief for the Times newspaper of London.

The political battle in the United States over recognition of the Armenian genocide boils down to a simple calculation: is the cost in spoilt relations with Turkey outweighed by respect for the memory of 1.5 million victims?

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from a lengthy column by the author, a California-based contributor to Asbarez newspaper, on his relation with Armenian music. Find the entire piece at www.asbarez.com

When I was in the Homeland in 2006, working as a news anchor and talk show host for Armenia TV, I curiously reported on the selection process for Armenia’s first entry into the Eurovision Song Contest. I loved our music and wanted us to share it with the world.

February 24 political consultations took place in Yerevan between foreign ministries of Armenia and Serbia. At first sight there was nothing principally important, especially taking into account the participation of deputies rather than ministers.

The passions over Eurovision, an annual song contest held by public broadcasters in Europe, were flying high throughout last week as the discussion of the controversial outcome of a national selection stage appeared to eclipse even the debate on such vital issues for the country as the Armenian-Turkish rapprochement.

Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev is fond of making war rhetoric concerning settling the long-running Armenia-Azeri conflict over Nagorno Karabakh.

He made one such statement in his interview to the pan-European TV news channel EuroNews prior to his Armenian counterpart’s visit to Great Britain.

If not clear before, it should be crystal, now, that Turkey has no intention (if it ever did) of following through with the foreign policy protocols that have served an opposite purpose to their intended cause of reconciling enemies.

An editorial in the February 5 edition of the Los Angeles Times summarizes the Armenia-Turkey foreign relations protocols and points out that the current stalled process threatens to make matters worse between the estranged countries, if a way forward cannot be found.

By convicting Nikol Pashinyan of a major crime against the state, the Court of Armenia has helped turn a provocateur into a martyr, whose stature has grown inordinately greater than his significance.