Reconciliation with Turkey would likely deliver a fatal blow to beleaguered Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Amberin Zaman writes in her article on Al-Monitor.
Normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey is out of the question in the near future, said a high-ranking Armenian diplomat on condition of anonymity. According to him, the Turkish initiatives are connected with the promise of President Joe Biden to join the growing number of nations that officially recognized the massacre of more than a million Ottoman Armenians in 1915 as genocide. “Turkey’s open support to Azerbaijan’s war of aggression in the form of its top military expertise, consultants, weapons as well as recruitment and transportation of Islamic mercenaries [from Syria] resuscitated century-old held Armenian fears of genocide,” the diplomat said. “It is shocking that a country may stick to genocidal intent for a century, without feeling an inch of guilt for what it its predecessors did, [rather than] acknowledge and repent for the crime,” he added.
Such sentiments are widespread. Reconciliation with Turkey is likely to deal a fatal blow to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who is facing numerous calls for his resignation. Jake Hanrakhan, creator of the independent platform Popular Front, who recently visited Nagorno-Karabakh, believes that the Armenian people will absolutely oppose any rapprochement with Turkey. “There are literally Turkish flags visible from [the Armenian-held town] Stepanakert [in Nagorno-Karabakh] right now hanging from [Azerbaijan-held] Shushi, a place where Armenians had their heads cut off on camera by Turkish-backed Azerbaijani forces,” he told Al-Monitor. “If the Armenian government decides to do this now, they will lose what scraps of faith they had from the people of Karabakh,” Hanrahan added.
Hanrahan was referring to several gruesome footage on social media during the war, when two Armenians were beheaded by Azerbaijani forces.
Lawrence Broers, director of Caucasus programs at Chatham House, agrees that with such bitterness, dialogue between Turkey and Armenia is difficult. “A humiliating defeat in which Turkey played a key role is of course not an enabling context for normalization. Any such process should be just that — a process, built up over time and realized across multiple dimensions — societal, cultural, ideational — not just as a geopolitical tradeoff,” he said.
Richard Giragossian, director of the Regional Studies Center, a think tank in Yerevan, believes Armenia may not have much influence in this regard. “Armenia’s now entrenched reluctance may become less of an obstacle and more of a minor inconvenience,” Giragossian said, citing two reasons: “First Turkey may initiate a unilateral effort to reopen the border, threatening to isolate Armenian leaders by forcing them into a self-defeating refusal.”
His second reason that normalization may result from an agreement imposed on Armenia between Russia and Turkey, sounds illogical. But Giragossian argues that Russian President Vladimir Putin will see this as an important way to strengthen the Eurasian Economic Union by expanding its borders to include Turkey. “Russian border guards control that border and the Russian-owned Armenian railway network will benefit. For Moscow it’s a further way to isolate Georgia,” he said.
Broers argues that a tough approach can produce quick results, but does not guarantee stability. Since Russia's former monopoly in the South Caucasus has been threatened by Ankara's decisive intervention on Azerbaijan's side and is now largely security-constrained, Turkey will need to decide whether it wants to use its influence as another hegemon over Armenia or have a different kind of relationship based on soft and economic power.
Turkey's aggressive stance in Syria, Libya, and the eastern Mediterranean suggests it is likely to opt for the former. “The whole dynamic of regionalization suggests Turkey is looking for ‘near-abroad theaters in which to project hegemony. Hegemonic power gets you a long way in the South Caucasus, but ultimately also falls victim to regional fracture,” Broers concluded.
