On Turkey, Armenia, Genocide

24 Jun 2009

Nagorno Karabakh Foreign Minister Georgi Petrosyan discusses Turkish relations with Armenia and Azerbaijan and the implications for the self-declared republic.

The Turkish government has flirted with normalizing relations with Armenia for some weeks now, external pagelaying out a roadmap in April.

The reaction from Azerbaijan has been one of astonishment, coupled with a reminder to the Turkish government that Azerbaijan expects a link to the Karabakh issue.

Possibly caught off-guard by the reaction in Azerbaijan, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid a visit to Baku on 12 May to external pagereassure President Ilham Aliyev that there was, in fact, a 'cause and effect' relationship between Karabakh and opening the Turkish-Armenian border. 

So I asked Foreign Minister Petrosyan if the momentum toward normalizing relations between Armenia and Turkey might affect Karabakh. Does he, I wondered, feel a bit nervous?

 “There were times when we were nervous during the war, but because we experienced the war, [we are no longer nervous.] We are concerned in some sense, but I wouldn’t describe it as ‘nervous.'"

“Armenia is an independent state that has every right to settle every sort of relation stemming from its national interest. And our concern that we voice to the Armenian leadership concerns the following: We remind them that Turkey has never been a disinterested party in this process; it has always been an interested party. And our advice to Armenia is to be careful in this matter, especially considering the psychological aspects.”

I asked him what he meant by 'psychological aspects.'

“I mean the genocide,” he replied. “After all, politics have a very serious connection with psychology. It’s not only a matter of territory...We have paid a very high price for our freedom, and we will continue to pay a price, of course. And in today’s situation, going back to the negotiation process, we say the following: We had put forward claims to the leadership of the Soviet Union as well as the Azerbaijani SSR, back in 1998. And what we received was the opposite, what we received was the war. And should we try to agree to different approaches, to try to move time backwards? Was it we who attacked Azerbaijan?”

Why not Karabakh?

In the meantime, Nagorno-Karabakh struggles to establish itself and to survive despite the lack of recognition for its independence or any help from the international community.

Petrosyan asked if I could think of any other countries that had managed to survive and transform themselves from a centrally planned economy into a free market economy “without financial, political, intellectual…help from outside? Was it Kosovo?”

Kosovo is an interesting example, and sometimes cited as a possible 'model' for Karabakh. But the model is of limited usefulness, since the international community has reaffirmed Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and there has been no outcry for intervention or recognition of Karabakh as a state, so Kosovo as a precedent may not be relevant.

“I think that something very interesting has happened, because it was just the opposite. It was we who were supposed to be a precedent for others, not Kosovo. But the opposite happened. For instance, when I remember what arguments were brought for recognizing Kosovo, and I also remember the arguments for recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the one argument that was the precedent in all those cases was, ‘If you do not intervene now and recognize those states, then you will have genocide there.’ And the fact that there was a time when they tried to conduct genocide against our people seems to be forgotten by many,” Petrosyan said.

And yet, I reminded Petroysyan, the international community responded in the case of Kosovo. NATO went to war against Serbia. There was intervention then, but not in Karabakh. But in both cases, the word 'genocide' was part of the narrative.

“Why should they help us?” he asked. “We have managed to do everything for ourselves. Do you think the new humanitarian model of the international community is that they always intervene and settle things? If that is the new humanitarian attitude of the international community, then what I would be concerned with here is that they are not really worried about the genocide of our people, but rather about their own interests.”

“Was that really happening in 1992-94?” I asked. “Was it genocide?”

“What do you think, when thousands of Armenians were being expelled, forcibly removed from their own homes? This was even during Soviet times. And it was during this period that the international community recognized Azerbaijan as a state, when the same Azerbaijan attacked another ethnic component in the country. What is the problem in the international community whereby 500,000 of its population - ethnic Armenians - were forced from their homes and had no rights, were not given human rights? No one was protecting them…People were only defending their rights, and the international community finds no way of recognizing that fact.”

Petrosyan’s views on the US are somewhat ambivalent. He talked of the various humanitarian projects in Nagorno-Karabakh that are funded by the US Congress and administered by agencies such as USAID, but he also believes that there is little effort or interest on the part of the US government in finding a lasting political resolution.

"What is odd about it is that…the Congress is allocating money, but at the same time, [the US] does nothing in the political sense.”

Toward the end of our conversation, I asked him if there was anything he would like to say directly to the Azeri people.

“We cannot exterminate one another. We have to be neighbors. It’s not animosity that should be grown between neighbors. Every human being has a right to live freely. Every people has a right to be free.”

The 6 June talks between Sargsian and Aliyev, which took place on the sidelines of an economic conference in St Petersburg, were described as 'constructive' and 'positive.' A new round of talks has not yet been scheduled.

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