Turkey, Armenia Agree To Establish Diplomatic Ties For First Time

YEREVAN, Armenia — Armenia and Turkey, bitter foes for a century, took a step toward reconciliation Monday by announcing they would launch final talks aimed at establishing diplomatic ties. But they won't discuss the deepest source of their enmity: the World War I-era massacres of Armenians under Ottoman rule.

Both sides said in a joint statement they expected the talks to take six weeks and to end with an agreement setting up and developing ties. The two countries, whose shared border is closed, are U.S. allies and came under American and European pressure to move toward peace.

The talks still face pitfalls, and will follow months of inactivity after signs of promise earlier in the year when President Obama appealed for reconciliation during a visit to Turkey.

The parliaments of the two countries must ratify a deal on diplomatic normalization, and in Turkey, nationalist sentiment and suspicion about Armenian intentions is particularly high.

Also, despite an agreement that the process should proceed without preconditions, Turkey's prime minister has linked it to a resolution of the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azeri region that was occupied by Armenian troops. The Turkish population shares close cultural and linguistic relations with Azerbaijan, which is pressing Turkey for help in recovering its land.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Monday that Turkey would "guard" Azerbaijan's interest during its reconciliation with Armenia, saying in comments broadcast by NTV television that "our aim is to establish stability in the Caucasus."

Turkey, however, clearly seeks to enhance its growing image as a regional statesman and a coveted ally of world powers in a strategic and often unstable region. The rapprochement with Armenia coincides with efforts to resolve a long-running feud with Turkey's Kurdish minority – issues that are vital to Turkish efforts to earn membership in the European Union.

Turkey's Islamic-oriented government is not immune to domestic pressure, especially from nationalists who believe Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is trying to undermine secular principles. That internal division has contributed to slow progress on the Armenian issue.

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"Turkey was perceived in Washington as the party that was dragging its feet," said Omer Taspinar, director of the Turkey project at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Taspinar said the announcement of talks was positive, but that it might be more cosmetic than substantive.

"It's better than nothing," he said. "We have plenty of reasons to be skeptical."

One of the biggest disputes between the neighboring countries is over the World War I-era massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians in the last days of the Ottoman Empire, which historians widely regard as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, contending the toll has been inflated and that the casualties were victims of civil war.

Armenian President Serge Sarkisian indicated the dispute would not be a deal-breaker between the two neighbors.

"It's important that historical justice be restored. It's important that our nations are able to establish normal relations," Sarkisian said in an interview published Monday by the BBC Russian service. "But we do not regard a recognition of genocide as a preliminary condition for establishing relations."

Turkey was one of the first countries to recognize Armenia's independence in 1991, but the two countries never established diplomatic relations and their joint border has been closed since 1993.

Illustrating just how intractable the Armenia-Turkey dispute has been, Israel and Germany managed to establish diplomatic relations in 1965, just 20 years after the end of the Holocaust, in which German Nazis and their collaborators murdered 6 million Jews. Today, the two nations enjoy close ties. In contrast to Turkey, however, Germany accepted responsibility for the genocide immediately after the war and began paying reparations to Jewish survivors.

The joint statement released by the Armenian and Turkish foreign ministries Monday said the two countries would start consultations to sign two protocols – one to establish diplomatic ties, the other to develop relations. The talks, with continued mediation by Switzerland, are to last six weeks.

In agreeing to move forward and normalize relations, landlocked Armenia is eager for a reopening of the border and the trade opportunities it would bring.

The border was closed after Armenian forces took control of the Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Turkish foreign minister said, however, that opening the border was out of the question for now. "A longer process is required for that," Davutoglu said Monday, according to NTV.

Turkish-Armenian ties began to improve after a so-called soccer diplomacy campaign last year, when Turkish President Abdullah Gul attended a World Cup qualifier in Armenia.

Sarkisian in the past has said he wants progress on the reopening of the border before he agrees to attend an Oct. 14 match in Turkey – about six weeks away.

Armenian political commentator Artyom Yerkanian, speaking during a special broadcast on Armenian television late Monday, suggested the agreement to establish ties could be signed at the October match in Turkey.

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, a major Jewish organization in the U.S., welcomed the announcement.

"Whatever historical pain and differences are, the best way to deal with them is for the two governments to reconcile and establish relationships and to deal with the past," he said. "If it happens, I think it's good news."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy welcomed the announcement, saying in a statement that "normalizing relations between Armenia and Turkey would constitute an event of historic import that would contribute to regional stability." Sarkozy opposes Turkey's entry into the EU.

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Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Comments

[zariann]

My Grandmother was rescued from a refugee camp in 1917 by a man, a U.S. citizen, who was to become my Grandfather. She was only18 or 19 years old, having resided her entire life until then in Van, Armenia. As far back as I can recall, my Grandmother told me of the horrific and inhuman acts of the Ottoman soldiers.

The older boys and men were rounded up, marched out of the villages by Ottoman soldiers, then slaughtered by the soldiers or by Kurdish mercenaries, leaving the Armenian woman, children, and infirm helpless. The Ottoman soldiers then typically gathered the helpless into the village church, barricaded the doors and windows, and set the church ablaze. My Grandmother told me of seeing Ottoman soldiers playing, apparently tossing a ball amongst themselves. Only the ball was actually the severed head of an infant or toddler.

My Grandmother has long since passed. Survivors of the Armenian Genocide are rapidly dwindling. Should any still be alive, the accuracy of their remembrances can so easily be questioned given their present age and/or their age at the time. How convenient for present day Turkey. If no witnesses are alive, then who can speak today with first hand knowledge of the atrocities? My sincere hope - the historians of the time accurately detailed the events of the Genocide and those recordings will leave no doubt the actions of the Ottoman Empire were a deliberate and systematic failed effort to eradicate the Armenians from the region.

[Khirad]

Good post.

[Academic]

Does the rest of the world really care? Israel has long established diplomatic links with Germany and the other states that tried to wipe out European Jews and others, so don't you all think that Turkey and Armenia could long have done the same thing?

Childish posturing!

Professor Dr. Stanley Collymore.

[MajorKong]

It's a start.

[Khirad]

The pretty much the best I can come up with too. There are still big issues to be worked out here.

[MarcusT]

The border was closed after Armenian forces took control of the Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh. I know it's a lot to ask but perhaps some historical perspective?

[DFutureIsNow]

Since President Obama took over the world is becoming a better place

[Jaywalkker]

Correlation does not equal causation.

[Talossa]

Holy Crap! I just about fell off my chair when I saw this. This is wonderful, wonderful for everybody, for all the right reasons. This is a gigantic step for Turkey, and if Turkey can do this and still retain her pride, then someday, maybe, the truth will be told.

[Egalitare]

Huge!!!!

[LMPE]

While my parents were in Greece and Turkey last year - they were in Turkey during the US presidential election - people asked them what Obama plans to do about Cyprus.

Maybe that will have to be the next step.

[MarcusT]

Yes, everyone has been waiting for the Americans to solve the Cyprus ıssue sınce 1960. Now if they could just fınd it on a map...

[kkurman]

this is significant, and good, news. Despite its many setbacks Turkey has made tremendous strides towards modernization. It has been unfortunate that they have continued to be marginalized by the European Union when they are the best hope for a model democratic state in the middle east. All power to them for forging forward into the 21st century with an eye towards peace.

[balickistan]

is lamb of god playing?

as for casualties of a civil war, at best that's revisionist. remember that hitler stated that no one remembered the armenians, when he was planning the final solution.

it would be a tremendous breakthrough if they normalized relations, but turkey must concede that they targeted armenians.

[sinope]

This is old news... the Armenian-Turkish conflict came to an end when Ana Kasparian joined TYT.

[PWM]

This could lead to good things.

[Mildmannered]

History is not always clear or one sided. For example, Justin A. McCarthy is a professor of history at the University of Louisville, in Louisville, Kentucky, and his areas of expertise include the histories of the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans.

"McCarthy has attracted controversy for his unorthodox view of the massacres of Armenians during the waning years of the Ottoman Empire. Most genocide scholars label these massacres as genocide, but McCarthy views them as part of a civil war, triggered by World War I, in which equally large numbers of Armenians and non-Armenians died. McCarthy's view is representative of that found among most Turkish historians of the Ottoman period, and is similar to the conclusions drawn by a few Western scholars such as Bernard Lewis and Guenter Lewy."

[allswellendswell]

And just how much does the Turkish government pay McCarthy to cultivate his imagination? And why is this being once again framed as a problem of history? It's a political problem to be resolved through political and legal means, including reparations where appropriate.

[ermeni]

where is my comment?

[ermeni]

HuffPost's Pick

yup, I'm an armenian who was born in turkey. very happy for the folks living in armenia, who will now be able to have business/financial trade with turkey across the border. it will bring prosperity to armenia. we lived peacefully with the turks for nearly 1000 years. this last century was a horrific one. my grandmother's family were killed when she was a little girl. 99% of armenians are gone from their homeland forcefully or killed.