Supporters of the Armenia-Turkey pact (U.S. and the E.U.) hope it will stabilize the region which after the Georgia-Russian war has become crucial for oil and gas transit. However, in Kars – a historically Armenian city now on the Turkish territory, people are skeptical about the normalization as they point to the Monument to Humanity symbolizing unity between the two nations.

“The statue of two 100-foot tall human figures, standing face to face on a hill above the city, is incomplete: A giant hand that would join the figures was never attached. The monument, built last year, is now under threat of destruction,” The Wall Street Journal reads.

“Small-minded people blocked the monument and they will block the peace process too,” says Naif Alibeyoglu, October 8 who had the statue built when he was mayor of Kars. “You wait and see, [the deal] will end up like my statue: a statue without hands,” the WSJ goes.

“The statue was my call for peace,” Alibeyoglu says. “Prejudices on both sides are deep, because neither side knows the other. We needed to break the ice,” Eurasia Insight informs.

“Why is one figure standing with its head bowed, as if ashamed?” asks Oktay Aktas, an ethnic Azeri and local head of the Nationalist Action Party. In fact, the two figures are standing straight. But he insists the monument is “an Armenian statue” representing Armenia reaching out to embrace eastern Turkish lands that had a large Armenian minority until 1915. “I said I would smash the statue down with my own hands, and I will,” Aktas adds, EI reads, Oct. 16.

According to the WSJ, “Kars would stand to benefit from the ability to trade across a border 25 miles away by train and truck. But some 20% of the city's population is ethnic Azerbaijanis, who consider opening the border while Armenia remains in control of a fifth of Azerbaijan's territory a betrayal.”

In November, Turkey's Commission for Monuments ordered that the Monument to Humanity be demolished.