The Turkish-Armenian game, played in Washington D.C.

A new stage in the dispute between Turkey and Armenia, concerning the issue of the genocide, was played this week in Washington D.C., after the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted a nonbinding resolution calling the mass killing of Armenians by the Turkish military, at the beginning of the last century a genocide. Turkey already condemned this move, who is risking to endangered the delicate equilibrium between Ankara and Yerevan, after an aparent opening in the second half of the last year.

The resolution was discussed as well in the Senate, in 2007, but given the need of Turkey's support for the war in Iraq by the then W. Bush administration stopped a further materialization of the decision. Both Barrack Obama and Hillary R. Clinton were supportive of the resolution.

The Turkish-Armenian agreement, signed in Switzerland, October 2009, was not fully supported by Armenian community, benefiting of a powerful and influential profile in Washington D.C..

Today, OSCE's Minsk Group on Nagorno-Karabakh isssued a statement calling the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaidjan to settle the conflict, position welcomed by Turkey.

The reconciliation process between the two countries is still extremely long and impredictable. Serious efforts, in the frame of the so-called Track II Diplomacy were made in the last dozen of years for making a dialogue possible. One of the most important issues established last year was the possibility to let the historians to discuss about such an high identity impact issue as the problem of the genocide. In this way, the politicians and diplomats are able to think about the present and the future. A very hard task, for societies where very often politicans are historians and made history focusing on the past.

The decision of the House do not add nothing to this process and complicate a situation that, in fact, was already volatile. Maybe it is a signal sent to Turkey - as long as, for example, this resolution was permanently on the agenda in the last two years but not voted - who is facing various setbacks in terms of coherent engagement regarding European and international politics.

Public apology of Turkish intellectuals for mass killing of Armenians

A first step, indeed, after 100 years of dissent. Turkish intellectuals who raised this question were killed or sued or threatened. Turkish diplomats were assassinated in various corners of the world by Armenian patriots. The public campaign to be launched by intellectuals could open the door to a process of getting the history out of the present, not by ignoring it, but by assuming the past.



ANKARA (Reuters) -- A group of Turkish intellectuals and academics are planning to issue a public apology on the Internet for the mass killings of ethnic Armenians in World War I.
The campaign, which has drawn the ire of nationalists who regard it as an act of national betrayal, coincides with a diplomatic rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia to end almost 100 years of hostility.

Turks, including Nobel Literature Laureate Orhan Pamuk, have been prosecuted in the European Union candidate country for affirming that the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 amount to genocide.
Cengiz Aktar, a professor at Istanbul's Bahcesehir University and one of the campaign's organizers, said the group plans to issue the apology on December 15 along with a non-binding Internet petition to gather signatures.
It will read: "My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to, and the denial of, the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice and for my share, I empathies with the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers. I apologies to them."
Turkey accepts that many Armenians were killed during the waning years of the Ottoman Empire, but strongly denies Armenian claims it was genocide, saying that Muslim Turks also died in inter-ethnic conflicts. Western historians have backed Armenian claims that the killings amounted to genocide.
The apology, which has been leaked to the media, threatens to reignite a controversy that challenges one of the ideological foundations of modern Turkey. It also comes at a time of heightened nationalism in Turkey.
Aktar said the initiative was meant to allow Turks to offer a personal apology and to end an official silence. "We are not targeting anyone. It's an apology of individual nature. We want to tell our Armenian brothers and sisters we apologies for not being able to discuss this issue for almost 100 years," he said.
He said the group included 200 writers, intellectuals, and academics. The European Union has repeatedly criticized Turkey for restrictions on free speech, in particular over punishments writers have received for comments on the Armenian issue.
President Abdullah Gul became the first Turkish leader to visit Armenia in September as Turkey has sought to improve ties. Several meetings between Turkish and Armenian officials have followed and the two countries have expressed hopes of restoring full diplomatic relations soon.



UPDATE:

AP:

Turkish nationalists have criticized the online apology and on Monday a group of some 60 retired Turkish diplomats described the move "as unfair, wrong and unfavorable to national interests."
"Such an incorrect and one-sided attempt would mean disrespecting our history," the diplomats said. Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the Nationalist Action Party said: "No one has the right to insult our ancestors, to present them as criminals and to ask for an apology."

By late Monday, there were no public threats of legal action over the petition.

Lessons from the Armenian-Turkish dialogue

Today's editorial from the Lebanese Daily Star is quite interesting, drawing a parallel between the possible settlement of the conflict between Turkey and Armenia and the situation from Middle East. In foreign affairs, comparisons could be quite risky. You have to take into account the historical, international, geographical, cultural, internal contexts, tremendously different from a case to another.

But, a similarity, at least from the technical point of view, it is not completely out of sight. The complicate framework of dialogue between Turkey and Armenia was made possible, among others, by constant and stubborn efforts of Track II diplomacy. If Track I is referring to the usual work of the diplomats from the embassies, Track II have to deal with the informal side of the diplomacy, in which non-officials engage in dialogue for confidence building and conflict resolution. It could involve, for example, meetings between journalists, joint contests of children, concerts etc. The main idea is to make possible knowing the other - a conflictual one - through what it is human, natural and easy to understand. From this slowly and timely built, trust- oriented basis you arrive little by little to the institutional and political levels. This quiet basis in itself could exert a noticeable pressure for change on the institutions and political leaders.

As for the Middle East, such an approach is welcomed. But it have to be filled creatively with the proper content, tailored on the measure and scale of the conflict. And maybe wait for another generation.

See more:

Nagorno-Karabakh, history of the conflict

Middle East Institute, Washington DC, links on Lebanon and current evolutions in the Middle East

Track II diplomacy, lessons from the Middle East