By Ivan Gharibyan
U.S. President Barack Obama goes on exploring every avenue to go back on his election pledge next April, when the U.S. is expected to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey in 1915. From the very first moment, when President Obama clearly showed he had no intention to at least pronounce the term “genocide” during his traditional address on April 24, U.S. diplomatic circles started exerting tremendous efforts to “launch” the Armenia-Turkey normalization process. Only some progress in this matter would allow the U.S. Administration to state with innocence that recognizing the Armenian Genocide would do harm to the fragile normalization process. The Turkish authorities at once grabbed at the primitive trick by their principal ally and have recently been constantly referring to talks with Yerevan as one more argument against the U.S. recognizing the Armenian Genocide.
April 24 is nearing, and the U.S. President desperately needs progress in the Armenia-Turkey normalization process. Under the circumstances, not only the ratification of the Armenian-Turkish protocols signed in Zurich on October 10, but also the reopening of the Armenian-Turkish border, can be considered progress.
At this point the major world power has faced serious problems, as it has obviously overestimated its influence on Turkey. Although Turkey is the United States’ principal ally in the region, the Erdogan-headed Government has been implementing a quite independent policy. New evidence thereof was the Turkish Premier’s recent visit to Washington, when he showed a blatant disregard for the top-ranking U.S. officials’ statements on the necessity for Armenian-Turkish reconciliation without any preconditions.
The Turkish Premier said his say, and the U.S. Administration has now to exert every effort to have the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settled as soon as possible, otherwise Turkey will never reopen the border by April 24, 2010. An obstacle to the settlement is nothing, but the illogical policy pursued by Turkey’s “small brother”, Azerbaijan, which is seeking to thwart the negotiations by means of bellicose statements.
As a result, referring to U.S. diplomats, Turkish mass media reported the U.S. Administration allegedly plans to have “some occupied territories” of Azerbaijan vacated by next April. It is obvious that the possible withdrawal of Armenian troops from the security zone round Nagorno-Karabakh is one of the components of the comprehensive Nagorno-Karabakh peace process. Also, as the Armenian side has repeatedly stressed, nothing is agreed on unless all the details are agreed on. So the international community has to work hard at the key point, namely, determining the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh – provided it is interested in further radical geopolitical changes in the region.
Thus, the U.S. Administration has to carry out serious work to get the only possible, mutually acceptable and fair solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Otherwise, all the recently exerted efforts will come to nothing, and the world will once more admit that the Presidents of the “world’s most democratic state” are not in the habit of honoring their elections promises, even the firmest ones. Well, the U.S. is not going to “hurt” its favorite ally, Turkey – or…
T.P.
