While the western media is reacting to the signing of protocols Saturday as if 100 years of Turkish-Armenian animosity has been whitewashed by however much ink is required to sign foreign ministers' names, statements by Turkey’s Prime Minister reveal a different and perhaps more accurate picture that demands prudent examination before Armenia’s parliament signs off on the documents.
Just a day after Armenia’s Foreign Minister did as he was told (by Hillary Clinton and others) to put pen to paper, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Armenia must withdraw from the occupied territories bordering Nagorno-Karabakh.
According to news reports Erdogan says Turkey cannot take a "positive step" toward opening the joint border with Armenia until Armenian troops give up ground they overtook in the battle to secure a perimeter for Karabakh.
So there it is.
Let President Serzh Sargsyan say now that there are no “pre-conditions”. Let Diaspora organizations who swallowed hard but willingly to support the protocols now back the president and say that he has battled “courageously” to ensure the integrity of Armenia’s interests. Where is the justification for their support, in light of these remarkably frank and informative revelations by the Turks?
By signing the protocols Armenia has welcomed Turkey – and more significantly, its backing of the US, Russia, France – to have its way with interpreting history and with shaping a future that Armenia must accept but cannot determine.
If you believe reports coming from American media on Saturday’s signing of the Armenia-Turkey protocols, Hillary Clinton deserves more credit (or blame) than Minister of Foreign Affairs Edward Nalbandyan or his counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu in getting the deal to the table.
From the seat of a BMW with papers flying and cell phones in both ears and, surely, an appreciation of the absurdity that a woman from Arkansas who grew up in the “Better Dead Than Red” era, should be the matchmaker between these countries must have struck the Secretary of State. Aides aiding and negotiators negotiating, Secretary Clinton brokered ways for Nalbandyan and Davutoglu to make nice so as not to spoil the glory of a moment that belonged to she and to her co-fixers, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.
Like good little boys brought to the principal’s office after a dust up on the playground, Nalbandyan and Davutoglu put their marks where they were told then kissed their proxy’s cheeks and schlunked off into the Zurich night deprived of the dignity of even making speeches on this day regaled as “historic”.
Look at a map.
The United States needs every avenue possible to secure overland passage to its growing points of conflict. An open border between Armenia and Turkey could only enhance its position that now includes over-flight rights with Russia.
Led by the latest Nobel Peace Prize winner, the US is now engaged in two wars on this continent and threatens a third (Iran). Armenia has nothing to offer but its geographic location. More vitally, though, the deal would allow the US military to expand its ties and aid to Azerbaijan – an aggrieved third party – and no longer bound by a sense of parity in security aid to Armenia/Azerbaijan..
This “rapprochement”, need we be told, is likely less about Armenia and Turkey relations than America-Afghanistan-Iran-Iraq convenience. (It is even more likely about US and Russian designs and a new-found cooperation in the region, post-Georgian war.)
Previously part of the Silk Road, Armenia is now valued as something far more ominous as it is positioned to become a link for the Russians that bypasses Georgia for commerce and a more direct line for the US that provides access to Iran that so far is obstructed by America’s own war in Iraq.
According to big-time US media reporting on Saturday’s signing in Zurich, Secretary Clinton was adamant and unrelenting in making sure signatures were secured for the Armenian-Turkish protocols.
Reportedly, she told Nalbandyan and Davutoglu: “This is too important, you’ve come too far. It has to be seen through.”
It has to be.
And so it will be. Like it or not.
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