Concise Structural Analysis of Turkish-Armenian Conflict

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This article is a slightly updated version of the Armenian original
published in AZG daily on December 13, 2008.

Preamble
With the independence of Armenia in 1991 the Armenian Question returned to the international arena, but no longer as an issue of salvation of Western Armenians as it was known towards the end of 19th and the beginning of 20th centuries. There were no more Armenians in the western part of Armenia. They had been exterminated in the course of the genocide carried out from 1893 to 1923 in three main phases (1893-1896, 1909, 1915-1923). During the Soviet period several of the eastern regions of Armenia were depopulated of their Armenian inhabitants as well, including Nakhijevan and Northern Artsakh.

In 1991 the Armenian Question returned to the international arena as a problem of survival of the newly created statehood of Armenia. The Turkish-Armenian Conflict (TAC) has entered a new phase, the main distinction of which is the existence of an internationally recognized Republic of Armenia (RA). Turkey’s longstanding policy of eliminating Armenia from the world map has not altered. Now, Turkey seeks to prevent the successful attainment of the newly independent Armenian statehood and destroy it in its embryonic structure. Turkey attempts to solve this problem through the intercession of her ally, Azerbaijan, because the present international conditions and her grave internal problems prevent direct Turkish invasion of Armenia. ¹

The restored statehood of Armenia was subjected to Azerbaijani aggression along the entire length of its eastern border in 1991-1994. Armenia (strategically and culturally, a single unit comprising of the Republic of Armenia and the unrecognized Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh) needed viable security guarantees, above all, defendable borders. At the cost of great sacrifice this problem was partially solved thanks to the liberation and establishment of military-political control (de facto statehood) over certain areas of the Armenian homeland.

After the Armenian victory in the liberation war in 1994, Turkey has been encouraging Azerbaijan’s belligerence and militarization by all means, thus acting as an immediate participant and senior consultant, often initiator and orchestrator of the latter’s activities against Armenia. Turkey also acts as the guarantor of the preservation of the region of Nakhijevan within Azerbaijan. Moreover, Turkey has been implementing an overt act of war against Armenia – a land blockade.

Turkey’s blessing and encouragement greatly contributed to the unleashing of the 1991-1994 war. In this respect, the genocidal ideology of Pan-Turkism, borrowed by Baku leaders (and openly admitted under president Elchibey), played its own role: this ideology envisions the building and realization of the Azerbaijani statehood through a policy of expansionism – at the expense of occupying Armenia’s entire territory and, later, certain parts of north-western Iran and eastern Georgia. Unable to be reconciled with the fact of the liberation of Artsakh, Azerbaijan is directed by an additional pragmatic consideration – to find easier means of governing the peoples of Azerbaijan by creating an image of an enemy.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that Azerbaijan has signed on to the policy of genocide against Armenians since her very inception in 1918 by assuming the role of the gradual occupier of Armenia from the east. This policy was continued by Baku through the Soviet years. In fact, Armenia is dealing with the combined and coordinated hostile policy of two allied states. In a larger context, the TAC encompasses the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, including the Artsakh issue. In this study, however, we will address the issue within the narrower Turkish-Armenian framework.

In the second half of the 19th century, during the intermittent period between the two wars waged against Russia (1856-1877), Ottoman Turkey conceived a policy of exterminating the Armenian ethnos in its cradle – the Armenian Highland – a development that conveyed an extraordinary character and stress to the TAC. Since those years the TAC has never ceased. It neither ceased during that brief period (1907-1912) when the most influential Armenian political force of the day – the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF – Dashnaktsutiun) – was cooperating with the Young Turks and the relations between the Armenian and Turkish leaders were cordial and amicable on the surface, nor did it cease during the long and drawn-out seven Soviet decades. During these periods the TAC has continued covertly or undisguised on political, informational, psychological and cultural fronts, at times involving the use of arms (particularly, the activities of Armenian avengers and Turkish secret services).

Thus, despite its passage through the fateful revolutions of the international political system, the TAC has remained constant at its foundation. At the core of the TAC are, on the one hand, Turkey’s goal of destroying Armenia, and on the other, the struggle of the Armenian people to sustain and ensure the lasting survival and security of Armenia’s statehood.

The protracted nature of the TAC, its passage through several historical phases with an unchanged agenda and its multiplication with additional new layers have accorded this conflict an unusually complex structure and voluminous content. The TAC’s adequate understanding itself has become a professional problem. Meanwhile, the policies and approaches displayed by the Armenian political elite and social-political thought towards the TAC are still amateur in nature.

Hopefully, the brief structural analysis of the TAC presented below can contribute to realistic formulations of Armenia’s foreign policy and to the realization of its security system.

The Structure of the Turkish-Armenian Conflict
The current phase of the TAC proceeds on ten principal levels (spheres), in each of which, in contrast to Armenia, Turkey shows clear positions and a deliberate policy. Meanwhile, until today most of these levels and their sublevels are not included in Armenia’s foreign policy agenda. Often, they are not even identified, and no comprehensive doctrine or adequate policies have been developed to address those that have been identified.
First, let us list the levels (spheres) of the TAC along with their sublevels (problems):
1. Conceptual-Terminological Level
1.1 The problem of perception and distortion of the concept of Homeland.
1.2 Attempts of reversing the roles of the invader and that of the victim robbed of her millennia-old Homeland and the passive attitude of the Armenian side to those attempts.
1.3 Armenia’s failure to properly define the conflict on the one side and the distorted accounts of the conflict effectively propagated by the Turkish side on the other.
1.4 Inadequate evaluation of Turkey’s policy against Armenia and Armenians.
1.5 The incorrect assessment given to Turkey’s current administration and politicians by the Armenian authorities.
1.6 The cartographic-toponymic war waged against Armenia and the Armenian historical-cultural heritage and its total neglect by the Armenian side. ²
2. Political Level
Turkey’s hostile actions in this sphere are as follows:
2.1 The 17-year refusal to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia and Armenia’s avoidance to give a political assessment to that step.
2.2 The 16-year old blockade of Armenia and Armenia’s abdication from evaluation of this hostile act in an appropriate manner.
2.3 The full diplomatic assistance given to Azerbaijan and Armenia’s acquiescence in that hostile action.
2.4 The persistent efforts of settling Meskheti Turks ( and, under their pretext, other Turkic elements as well ) in Armenian-populated Javakhk and the silence maintained by the Armenian side regarding these efforts.
2.5 The numerous actions in the international arena directed against Armenia’s interests and their disregard by the Armenian side.
2.6 The unacceptable and humiliating preconditions presented to Armenia, including the three primary ones: the resolution of the Artsakh issue in favor of “Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity,” the suspension of the process of international recognition of the Armenian Genocide, and the public repudiation and abandonment in perpetuity by official Yerevan of the western territories of Armenia occupied by Turkey. Conversely, we have the abdication by Armenia of her own legitimate preconditions (for establishing normal inter-state relations with Turkey), which consist in the right to demand confidence-building measures and security mechanisms. ³
3. Historical-political Level
3.1 Turkey’s state-organized large-scale campaign of denial of the Armenian Genocide and distortion of historical facts within her own borders, as well as in the international arena.
3.2 The favorable, though nonchalant, attitude adopted by the RA during 1998-2008 towards the process of “international recognition of the Genocide;” with a noticeable decrease since mid-2008 in the already not-so-brisk activism of the RA in this field.
4. International Law Level
4.1 The problem of extremely tense geopolitical situation prevailing in the region due to the failure to implement the Treaty of Sevres, particularly, the question of incomplete and unrecognized territorial guarantees that would ensure the viability of an Armenian state and the question of the creation of a Kurdish state, further south.
4.2 The problem of legal imperfection, current deficiencies in the applicability and impracticalities of the 1921 Moscow and Kars treaties, signed in bad faith.
4.3 Article 301, and other related articles, of the Turkish penal code criminalizing the discussion of the Armenian Genocide or expression of Armenian perspectives on the TAC.
4.4 The complete abdication by the Armenian government of the TAC’s International Law level.
5. Level of Information-Psychological Warfare
5.1 The great assistance in propaganda provided by Turkey to Azerbaijan in the Karabakh conflict.
5.2 The numerous, diverse, and persistent actions of informational and psychological nature carried out against Armenia and Armenians in the international arena as well as in Turkey, Armenia and amongst Diasporan circles, including:
5.2.1 The preparation and dissemination of anti-Armenian literature and other materials, which have acquired an organized nature ever since the 1920s and, since then, have only intensified, come to include new spheres and become multilingual;⁴
5.2.2 The sowing of anti-Armenian attitudes abroad through Turkish colleges;⁵ and
5.2.3 The extensive lobbying done through Turkish embassies and state and private entities against information and analyses that present the Armenian Question in a truthful light.
5.3 The recurrent dissemination of misinformation regarding the purported existence of Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) military bases in Armenia.
5.4 Within Turkey, the veneration of the authors and perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide, including Talaat-pasha.
5.5 The persistent propaganda efforts aimed at driving a wedge between Armenia and the Diaspora.⁶
5.6 The efforts aimed at turning the governments and public of the countries hosting an Armenian population against Armenians. ⁷
5.7 Turkey’s secret activities of encouraging the emigration of Armenians from Armenia and the Near Eastern countries and directing them towards distant continents.
5.8 Armenia displays an ”ostrich policy” – a policy of deliberately ignoring the Turkish hostilities – in this informational-psychological war waged against her.
6. Economic Level
6.1 The long-lasting blockade of Armenia.
6.2 Turkey’s authoring of special regional projects with the purpose of isolating Armenia, including the initiation of the Kars-Tbilisi-Baku railroad construction.
7. Cultural Level
7.1 The destruction and attempts at appropriation of Armenian historical-cultural heritage.
7.2 The falsification of Armenian history in Turkey as well as in the international arena. ⁸
7.3 The complete idleness by Armenia in response to the cultural war waged against her.
8. Military Level
8.1 Turkey’s comprehensive assistance to Azerbaijan in her preparation for war against Armenia, including:
8.1.1 The sharing of intelligence;
8.1.2 The supply of arms and ammunition;
8.1.3 Providing military advice and consultation, including the organization of the operations of Azerbaijan’s General Staff, if not its command-and-control;
8.1.4 The preparation of officers and training of special forces units; and
8.1.5 The assistance to Azerbaijan in its involvement in NATO’s programs and activities.
8.2 The threats made against Armenia since 1991, including the misinformation regarding the supposed establishment of Kurdistan Worker’s Party military camps in the Republic of Armenia and Artsakh and the threats of ”retaliation”.⁹
8.3 The RA’s silence regarding these threats and, furthermore, her political-military cooperation with Turkey within the framework of NATO.¹⁰
9. The protection of human rights of the Armenian minority living in Turkey
9.1 Pressuring and coercing the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople into making pro-Turkish statements and calls.
9.2 The prohibition within Turkey of remembrance of the victims of the Armenian Genocide.
9.3 The state enforcement of the cult of Kemal Ataturk, one of the notorious executioners of the Armenian people, in community institutions, including in the schools, of Istanbul Armenians.
9.4 Constitutionally declaring all citizens of Turkey, including Armenians, as ethnic Turks.
9.5 The securing of the safety of the Armenian minority and the thousands of RA citizens/migrant workers in Turkey.
9.6 The complete neglect of this level of the TAC by the RA.
10. Serious schisms arising out of the TAC among the various segments of the Armenian nation, including within the domestic political arena of Armenia
10.1 The various statements and suggestions by official Yerevan regarding the renunciation of claims to the western part of the native homeland of the Armenian people, currently within the borders of Turkey , may:
10.1.1 Draw new dividing lines within the Armenian public in Armenia proper as well as between Armenia and the Diaspora; ¹¹ and
10.1.2 Demoralize Armenians in their struggle for the realization of national goals in its entirety.
10.2 The splits and divisions are especially evident on the Turkish demand for setting up a joint commission composed of Armenian and Turkish historians to discuss primarily the fabricated issue of whether there was Armenian Genocide.¹²
10.3 The advent of this level is largely conditioned by the imprudent activities of the RA authorities.

At the foundation of all these levels lies the Armenian Question – the issue over territory that would guarantee the viability, defensibility, economic development and later (including through repatriation of Armenians) the demographic growth of the restored statehood of Armenia. This list itself attests that Turkey carries out an all-embracing offensive policy against Armenia and Armenians in dozens of directions.
The foreign policy of the RA overlooks many of the above-mentioned activities of Turkey. For instance, levels 1, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10 are entirely overlooked. Certain problems in the other levels are left unaddressed or inadequately assessed. In other words, the RA’s policy toward Turkey has not been formulated during the 17 years of independence and has been neglected, thereby leaving numerous fronts of vital importance to the security of Armenia defenseless.
The TAC’s foundational level of concepts and terminology deserves a separate examination. As unfortunate as it may be, only the Turkish side has thoroughly developed the TAC’s concepts and terminology. To this day, the Armenian side has not been able to satisfactorily evaluate the situation and present it in accurate characterizations. The very nature of the TAC – a conflict – is distorted as it has been replaced by “neighborhood”, “relations” and similar terms. However, are not long-lasting hostile relations anything other than a conflict? ¹³

Thus, Turkey’s 17 year-old refusal to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia must be deemed as nothing other than an attempt to reject Armenia’s right to statehood at its root. However, officials in Yerevan have never given such an assessment.

Thus, Turkey calls Armenia a country occupying Azerbaijan’s territory – an “occupier”. At the same time, Armenia is afraid of reminding that the real aggressor is Turkey, which, through genocide, has depopulated the western part of Armenia of its Armenian inhabitants in its entirety and its eastern part partially – Kars-Ardahan-Surmalu – and has misappropriated the territory therein –Mount Ararat and Armenia’s medieval capital Ani.

The correct perception of the concept of homeland, which has a fundamental significance for the resilience and existence of the Armenian nation, has been endangered. Allusions are being made regarding Armenia’s renunciation of its rights to its western part forever. In particular, the President of RA in an interview recently stated that no RA official has ever spoken of territorial claims¹⁴ or raised any question regarding Western Armenia. In another of his statements Western and Eastern Armenia are called merely “geographical terms”,¹⁵ without noticing that it is one of the old and most dangerous tenets developed by Turkish propaganda.¹⁶ He also stated that the resolution of Turkish-Armenian problems should not be left to posterity.¹⁷ Since it is clear to everyone that complete or partial liberation of the occupied portion of the Armenian homeland is not a present-day task, then the President is insinuating a disavowal in perpetuity of that portion of the motherland. However, the more or less adequate compensation for the immeasurable harm caused to the Armenian people by Turkey, could be primarily in the form of return of territory, and serve as the basic guarantee for Armenia’s long-term security. To renounce the homeland’s estranged part means to reject our own identity, those thousands of visible and invisible bonds that sustain Armenians as Armenians. Such a step will disintegrate the entire worldview and existential purpose of Armenians and turn them into a mass devoid of will and purpose. Subsequent to this, the solution of the Armenian Question according to the Turkish scenario will not require special efforts. Also, the disavowal of motherland’s estranged portion is meaningless politically as it does not reinforce any of the elements of Armenia’s security. There are tens of big and small states in the world that have territorial disputes spanning decades. Yet, the thought of renouncing the greatest strategic asset – territory – does not cross the minds of any of those nations, especially if the matter concerns their own homeland.¹⁸

In a brief digression, let us note that for some reason in recent months the top officials in the Armenian leadership one after another have been granting interviews to Turkish mass media that more resemble interrogations. In the recent period the RA President has given three interviews to Turks (on August 21st, 2008, to the correspondents of CNN-Turk, on August 28th to “Radikal”, on September 20th to “Milliyet”), and a few more were given by the RA Foreign Minister.¹⁹ The Armenian Prime Minister another interview to the Azerbaijani Day.az agency (on October 27th).²⁰ During the same period no Turkish or Azeri official granted even a single interview to Armenian news media. Such a phenomenon in interstate relations of conflicting countries attests to the inequality of the parties to Armenia’s detriment.

Armenian authorities’ conciliatory and defeatist approaches to the TAC were underscored once more in November 2008, when all the countries who participated in the First World War were marking the 90th anniversary of the end of the war and commemorating their own victims. Only Armenia, which in that war suffered proportionally the largest number of victims and losses, did not utter even a single word on the official level to remember that anniversary, so that the Armenian political elite’s empty illusions of “Turkish-Armenian reconciliation” do not suddenly vanish.

Wrong appraisal of Turkey’s current Armenophobic authorities and politicians are made. The RA supreme leadership calls them – nothing more, nor less than – “courageous partners”²¹ and fails to notice that they are the present-day pursuers of the Turkish traditional genocidal policy. In reality, the political system in Turkey is fascist in its legalized extreme chauvinism, brutality towards ethnic minorities – including relocation and extermination, cult of Ataturk existing up to this day, and, especially, policy of relentless aggression carried out against Armenia and Armenian people.²² It is one thing if the West or other countries do not properly characterize the Turkish statehood. They have no need for it. However, by not assessing properly those Turkish politicians who deny the Genocide, which is an indication of readiness to carry out a new genocide, Armenia falls into a serious predicament: neither does she understand her enemy’s true ideology, strategic calculations and goals, nor does she even try to appropriately present her dire geostrategic situation to the international community.

The problem is qualified differently by experts in genocide. “Denial is the final stage of genocide. It is a continuing attempt to destroy the victim group psychologically and culturally, to deny its members even the memory of the murders of their relatives. That is what the Turkish government today is doing to Armenians around the world,” says Gregory Stanton, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Elie Wiesel, the famous Holocaust survivor and political activist, has repeatedly called Turkey’s 90-year-old campaign to cover up the Armenian genocide a double killing, since it strives to kill the memory of the original atrocities.²³ The Armenian government should have given to Turkish denialism similar and graver assessments, but to this date it has failed to do so.

It is high time to specifically analyze not only the phenomenon of Turkish denialism of the Armenian genocide, but also the official Yerevan’s denialism of Turkish denialism, that is the ignoring by Armenian authorities of a fundamental geopolitical reality – the hostile policy by Turkey. The Turkish denialism is a rationally developed policy, which seeks to prevent the possible undesirable consequences of the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide. While the Armenian denialism is the extremely uncritical and irrational acceptance of the artificial “Turkish-Armenian reconciliation” dictated from abroad. And what is presented as “Turkish-Armenian reconciliation” is nothing but the unconditional capitulation of the Armenian side in the face of permanent anti-Armenian actions perpetrated by the Turkish state.

In one of his interviews the Armenian Foreign Minister is, in fact, confessing the nyctalopia of RA’s foreign policy, saying that he “does not see any obstacle to the normalization of relations with Turkey” and that he is “very optimistic on that question”.²⁴ Thus, the above-mentioned ten levels and their sublevels have been left out of the sight of our foreign policy, and unfounded “optimism” has taken their place.²⁵
Furthermore, as already mentioned, the Armenian side, which is the victim of the Genocide carried out by Turkey and is today still subjected to the latter’s consistent hostile acts, does not even define the TAC with its real name – a conflict. Yet, if we are dealing with a conflict, then we must radically change the political vocabulary and speak not of the warming of nonexistent relations, of supposedly registered “thawing”, but instead present to the international community and, in the first place, to the Armenian audience the true strategic causes and motives of the TAC, the possibilities for implementing security and confidence building measures or the lack thereof. A lasting settlement of a conflict with such a complex structure cannot be achieved through initiatives that are aimed at superficial relief of tension, such as the “soccer diplomacy” (which, by the way, has brought nothing but harm to Armenia). These initiatives are doomed to failure.

Otherwise, according to Armenian diplomacy’s interpretation there are only two existing problems in the “Turkish-Armenian relations”: the absence of diplomatic relations and the “opening of the border” (which, often, is not even characterized by the correct term – lifting of blockade). The remaining questions are viewed as subject to discussion in the future and are even being called “emotional” or “contentious” ²⁶ (we saw how numerous and weighty those questions are). For years Armenian diplomacy has repeated the wrong thesis originated in Washington that both these questions are the result of the Karabakh conflict and that Turkey’s policy has become the “hostage and prisoner” of Azerbaijan. This, despite the fact that Turkey herself does not give such a simplistic assessment of her policies against Armenia, but clearly points out that Azerbaijan’s interests are firmly conjoined with her own.

Officials of both Turkey and Azerbaijan have repeatedly announced that they represent “one people, two states.” Here is an entirely fresh testimonial regarding this. On December 1, 2008, Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs A. Babacan expressed a clear position on this matter during a joint press conference with his colleague E. Mammadyarov of Azerbaijan: “The problems related to the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict shall be given a solution in a complex way. … These two issues are inseparable.”²⁷ Moreover, Turkey distinguishes two additional motives which do not have any direct connection to Azerbaijan – suspension of the process of international recognition of the Genocide and the official recognition of Turkey’s borders (the actual and final goal, as noted above, is to destroy Armenia).

Thus, the TAC is a multilevel and multifaceted conflict, the resolution of which cannot be reduced solely to the lifting of Armenia’s blockade by Turkey and the establishment of diplomatic relations. The realization of only these two steps will not mark the end of Turkey’s hostile policies against Armenia. As we have written previously, Turkey will open the border with Armenia only in one event – if her calculations show that doing so will cause an even greater harm to Armenia. In the new conditions of “good-neighborliness” Turkey will transfer her hostile policies to other more dangerous fields, bringing forth serious problems for Armenia’s national security. A Turkish economic and demographic invasion of Armenia will follow; the local producer will be pushed out of the market. Ankara will encourage mass emigration of Armenians into Turkey and the entrance of Turks and Kurds into Armenia ²⁸ (partly under the name of so called “Muslim Armenians” – bait which the RA authorities seem to have swallowed²⁹); we will also have thousands of mixed marriages. The informational, ideological, cultural, and psychological attacks and the unimpeded penetration of the Turkish state propaganda into Armenia will intensify in parallel to the Turkish economic invasion. ³⁰ The Armenian public is in great need of serious professional discussion of all these issues, and not the intentional brainwashing and campaigns propagating goodwill towards Turkey found in Armenia’s official mass media, especially television.

Let us conclude. The obvious mutual exclusivity of Turkish-Armenian state and national interests, the violent clash of strategic interests, the incompatibility of ideologies and all other above-mentioned hostile activities rule out the settlement of the multilevel Turkish-Armenian Conflict through quick, “sport-like” methods advocated today. As a result of such shallow “solutions”, only Armenia and the Armenian people will suffer. The main prerequisite for the settlement of the TAC is the creation of a strong, secure and defensible Armenia. Only then will Turkey and her ally Azerbaijan be reconciled with the Armenian state’s right to existence.
Realism and pragmatism call for a reorienting of Armenia’s foreign policy away from underestimating and ignoring Turkey’s blatant hostility to the reassertion of all aspects of the Armenian Question, including through the use of politically realistic recommendations with regard to territorial compensation. ³¹

P.S. This article was originally published in Armenian about five months before the signing of the so-called ‘Road-map’ between Armenian and Turkish MFAs on April 22/23, 2009, an act, which came to directly torpedo the vital national security interests of Armenia as well as the process of international recognition of Armenian Genocide, with no swift rectification of the situation on the horizon.³²

Armen Ayvazyan
Doctor of Political Science
Director of ARARAT Center for Strategic Research

ANNOTATIONS
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* The article was first read as a report at the 6th “Armenian Cause Today” conference that took place in Tehran on November 13th–14th, 2008 and published in Azg daily on December 13, 2008.