But Armenia–Turkey agreement faces challenges after 'football diplomacy'
On 10 October 2009, the foreign ministers of Armenia and Turkey signed two protocols: the first is on the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, while the second covers their further development. Under the agreements, which are still to be ratified, the border is to be opened and an intergovernmental commission will be set up to address development or relations. The two sides recognise each other’s territorial integrity, and the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute is not a precondition for normalising relations, as Turkey had previously demanded.
Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan is seen as having made the first move, with the somewhat unusual step of inviting Turkish President Abdullah Gul to visit Armenia to watch a World Cup football qualifying match between the two countries on 6 September 2008. Thirteen months later, the presence of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and European Union (EU) foreign-policy chief Javier Solana at the signing ceremony in Zurich was a testament to the landmark status of these agreements.
Yet the fact that the ceremony proceeded without any statements from the parties themselves, and that it was almost derailed by last-minute disagreements requiring intervention by external mediators, indicated how controversial the agreements are for the signatories. The leaders of both countries took major risks by initiating the normalisation process in the face of opposition. If they succeed, the strategic environment in the South Caucasus region could be transformed.
Historical legacies
The relationship between Armenia and Turkey, which were on opposite sides of the Cold War divide, has been clouded by multiple long-running disputes. In 1915, some 1.5 million ethnic Armenians were massacred in Ottoman Turkey. Millions more were scattered around the world, forming a powerful diaspora that has played a leading role in the campaign to have the killings internationally recognised as genocide. Turkey strongly opposes such a definition.
The second issue was the border established under the 1921 Kars Treaty signed by Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan – all three of which were then part of the Soviet Union – and Turkey. The treaty, which implemented the will of the USSR, ceded to Turkey regions historically populated by Armenians, including the area around Mount Ararat. Groups in Armenia and the diaspora have called on the Armenian government to denounce the Kars Treaty and reclaim the territories. However, when Armenia agreed to its status as an independent state after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and later joined the United Nations, it de facto recognised its current borders.
The third issue was the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh province of the former Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), in which Armenians constitute the majority of the population. In the final years of the Soviet Union, Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh demanded that the region should become part of the Armenian SSR. The conflict, which started out in 1988, was the bloodiest post-Soviet war, claiming an estimated 35,000 lives and leaving more than 1m refugees. The war ended in 1994 with Armenian forces establishing control over Nagorno-Karabakh itself and occupying seven other regions of Azerbaijan, expelling all the Azeri population from all these regions and declaring Nagorno-Karabakh an independent state – though it has not been recognised by any other country.
Fifteen years of peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan, mediated by the Minsk Group co-chaired by Russia, the US and France, have made no progress towards resolving the dispute. Because of the close ethnic and political ties between Turkey and Azerbaijan, which is populated by ethnic Turkic people, Turkey closed the border with Armenia in 1993. Turkey then insisted on the return of all occupied territories to Azerbaijan as a precondition for opening the border and establishing diplomatic ties.
Turkey’s initiative
The deadlock in Turkish–Armenian relations was suddenly and unexpectedly broken following the August 2008 Russian–Georgian war. After trying to mediate between Georgia and Russia to stop the hostilities, Turkey proposed a ‘Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform’, a multilateral confidence-building mechanism to include all three South Caucasus states, Turkey and Russia. Although the mechanism has had very limited success so far, Turkish leaders decided to attempt to normalise relations with Armenia in order to demonstrate initiative and leadership.
Turkey’s strategic calculation might also have included other considerations, including the election of Barack Obama as US president. During the campaign, he promised to recognise the Armenian genocide if elected. Vice President Joe Biden has strongly supported recognition for over 25 years. Forging relations with Armenia may have been seen in Ankara as a means of pre-empting the damage to Turkey’s reputation that US recognition – probably followed by others – could cause. Another Turkish goal could have been to influence its stalled EU membership talks by positioning the country as a key player in the South Caucasus, a region where the EU has been increasingly engaged. The move to establish relations with Armenia also took place against the background of a more outward-looking approach by Turkey in which it has improved relations with all of its neighbours including Iran, Iraq, Syria and, most recently, Russia.
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