Article
At What Point Do You Say "Enough"?

By Moorad Mooradian, Ph.D.

There are circumstances in international relationships when the hand extended toward peace may be interpreted as weakness. Peace cannot be attained with one side asking for improved relations while the other side rebuffs the gestures. The non-responsive party is emboldened when the other side makes gestures that are tantamount to groveling. Subservience reduces the chances for meaningful discourse. This is particularly true in the realistic world of international politics where power is admired as the ultimate tool of success. Any party with a modicum of understanding of what peace entails realizes that no peace is real if the relationships lack dignity. If what the Istanbul Hurriyet printed on December 6 is accurate, the President of the Armenian-Turkish Business Council (ATBC) based in Yerevan is opening himself up to a chattel relationship with his Turkish colleagues.

That there are organizations in Armenia and Turkey that are attempting to break through the stalemate between the two neighbors is admirable. But what is the price that the President of the ATBC is willing to pay to get the Armenian? Turkish border opened for business? Between October and December of this year, I conducted a nationwide survey, with a random sampling of over 1100 citizens from every district in the country of Armenia. Based upon the responses, he is willing to pay infinitely more than his brethren. The results of this survey will be published in due time. Suffice it to say that, for the time being, the ATBC official is way out of step with the rest of the citizens of Armenia. In fact, his remarks to the interviewer of the Istanbul Hurriyet make it seem as though he is living in a different country. This person who leads the ATBC might be enlightened on a number of points.



GENOCIDE RECOGNITION VS. BORDER OPENING

First, an overwhelming number of his fellow citizens of Armenia, those people who ostensibly have much to gain with the opening of the Armenian? Turkish border, chose recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Turkey as a higher priority than opening of the border. The difference in the numbers was not even close.

Second, the President of the ATBC should understand in unequivocal terms that his fellow citizens are committed to defending their identity, which is intimately tied to the Genocide. They have not placed possible monetary gains and purported friendship with Turkey above the truth and dignity. The survey answers indicate that the respondents would recoil in anger if the use of the word "alleged" preceded the Genocide. The Hurriyet suggests that word was used by the ATBC official. The citizens of Armenia are not about to let the Genocide pass with the shrug of a business shoulder. Third, while the survey showed that the citizens of Armenia want improved relations with Turkey, they are not anywhere near calling Turkey Armenia's "elder brother," as was purportedly done by the ATBC president. Since when does an "elder brother" strive to send a sibling to bed hungry, or arm a neighbor against a family member? The ATBC president is reported to have been pleading with the Turks to consider the Armenians as part of the family. If this abasing language is accurately reported by the Hurriyet, the ATBC president has reached beyond the pale into a cavern that is a bottomless pit.

What the Armenian-Turkish and Turkish-Armenian Business Council presidents have failed to understand, because they have not cared to look, is that the Genocide issue is not an extremist position foisted upon a hapless Armenia. If there is one issue that the Diaspora and the citizens of Armenia can agree upon without coercion, it is the reality of the Armenian Genocide. It was the citizens of Armenia who demonstrated and erected the Musa Ler monument. The Diaspora was not even in the equation when the Genocide Memorial was built in Yerevan, and the Communist hierarchy opposed both of these monuments. Armenia was not "hungry" in either instance, the monuments were erected during the "good old days" when everyone in Armenia had a job and the border with Turkey was locked even tighter than it is at this writing.

The fellow business councils call for the establishment of a Joint History Commission. Pray tell, to do what, given the laws in Turkey that have made a sham of historical scholarship in Turkey? Historians and a plethora of genocide scholars have studied the Genocide, and they have already accomplished what the Turkish government says must still be done.



IMPARTIALITY OUT OF THE QUESTION

The problem is that the Turkish government does not care to have impartial scholars' conclusions. The real scholars in the international arena, not under the pay of the Turkish government, who live in free societies, have announced their findings: what happened in 1915 was a genocide ?? period. Until such time that the Turkish laws allow academic freedom, there can be no scholarship on this subject. Scholars must strive to find the truth as the facts unveil it to them. Differences in opinions cannot be discussed when the government holds a gun to the head of the scholar, or the threat of imprisonment hangs over the interpretation of every word uttered in argument. The commissions and committees that the Turkish government and parliament have designed to investigate the "so-called" Genocide have their marching orders. Turkish papers and people who dare to speak the "G" word dare not say it without qualifying it as "so-called."

Talk about an interesting juxtaposition, the business councils want "elder brother" Turkey to bring Armenia and Azerbaijan around a table to negotiate the Karabagh conflict. Admittedly, peace in the region requires the cooperation of Turkey [also Iran and Russia], but what can develop at a table with a biased mediator that has a direct stake in Azerbaijan getting its own way? Contrary to what the ATBC leader is reported to have stated, the conflict over Karabagh did not start in 1988 from instigation by the Communists. The Karabagh conflict carried over from the wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan at the beginning of the 20th century. The strength resulting from Azerbaijan's siding with the Islamic Army took Shushi away from the Armenians in 1920, and reduced the majority Armenian population to a token minority in that city, which then became the Azerbaijan stronghold until 1992. It wasn't the Diaspora or another outside party that instigated the partitions from thousands of Armenians of Karabagh to Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev, asking to rejoin Karabagh with Armenia or to make the territory part of Russia. The conflict was never resolved; it entered a latent stage via Soviet coercion until it erupted into violence. Turkey cannot be an impartial third party as long as it has so much to gain by ensuring that Azerbaijan retains full control over the lands that will overlook the pipeline, which will carry a considerable amount of wealth to Ankara.

The best thing for the ATBC to do is to either affirm that the Hurriyet article was incorrect, or to get real.



ADDENDUM

Upon my personal confirmation with Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian, he stated that neither he nor President Kocharian had sent any such message to the Turkish officials. Further, the President of the ATBC maintains that his remarks were totally distorted by the Turkish press, and that he has retracted most of what was written. Thus, another chapter of why words spoken to the Turkish press, officials, and semi-officials have to be weighed very carefully and why dialogue at this time when the Turkish officials are not ripe for honest discourse, may be an exercise in futility. Turkish laws do not allow academic freedom, freedom of the press, freedom of public discussion, inquiry, or public expression on the subject of the Genocide, and conversations with Turkish citizens, no matter of what stripe, must take this into account. At a minimum, the Turkish press should be considered a semi-official organ of that society.

Springfield, VA