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Armenia - Relations with Turkey

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told FRANCE 24 on 03 October 2020 that Turkey would continue its expansionist footprint and its goal of “the genocide of Armenians”. Pashinyan said “Armenia is the last obstacle in the way of Turkey and their expansion towards the north, and the east”. He pointed to recent evidence of Turkish aggression in the Mediterranean Sea towards Greece and involvement in Syria and Iraq. “Turkey has a clear objective of reinstating the Turkish Empire. Don’t be surprised if that policy succeeds here, don’t be surprised if they attempt to incorporate into their empire not only the Greek islands but expand further into continental Europe. If Turkey succeeds in this, wait for them in Vienna.”

Turkey had jumped to Azerbaijan's defense during the recent deadly flare-up between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh and this time, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is pulling no punches. Over the summer of 2020, Turkey – a traditional Azerbaijan backer, with the two countries bound by ethnic and historic ties – increased its involvement in the region. In July 2020, clashes broke out along the border in Azerbaijan’s autonomous Nakchivan exclave, which is nestled between Turkey, Iran and Armenia. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other of sparking the fighting, which resulted in the deaths of several military personnel and civilians along with the destruction of infrastructure in the border region.

Weeks later, Azerbaijan and Turkey launched two weeks of joint military exercises involving artillery as well as aviation and air-defense equipment, marking “the largest of its kind in the recent history of military cooperation between the two countries”, noted the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, DC-based research and analysis institute.

In the decades after World War II, relations between Armenians and Turks degenerated. The Turks became embittered by acts of Armenian terrorism against Turkish citizens in other countries, especially in the 1970s, which served to remind the world of the genocide issue. Starting in the 1980s, Turkey began aspiring to play a major role in European affairs and to exert leadership among the Central Asian Muslim nations that emerged from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. These foreign policy goals encouraged Turkish ambivalence toward Armenian objectives in Nagorno-Karabakh. However, traditional Turkish nationalism demanded alliance with Muslim Azerbaijan, and eastern Turkey remained a heavily fortified area after the end of the Cold War-- about 50,000 Turkish troops were on the Armenian border in early 1994. In turn, Armenia saw its collective security treaty with the CIS and the presence of Russian troops in Armenia as restraints on the nationalist impulse in Turkish policy making.

In the Karabakh conflict, Turkey sided with Islamic Azerbaijan, blocking pipeline deliveries to Armenia through its territory. Most important, Turkey withheld acknowledgment of the 1915 massacre, without which no Armenian government could permit a rapprochement. Nevertheless, tentative contacts continued throughout the early 1990s. Turkey and Armenia remain locked in bitter disagreement over Turkey's unwillingness to recognize the events of 1915 as a concerted campaign to destroy the Armenia people. In the process of expelling the Armenian population from northeast Turkey to the south, about one and a half million Armenians were killed, a fact denied by the Turkish Government. The Turkish view is that there was no Genocide. What happened was a bitter civil war started by Armenian nationalists, in which both Armenians and Muslims died. The figure of 1.5 million Armenian victims is exaggerated; the number of Muslims who died in the same period is close to 3 million. Compromise between Turkey and Armenia and recognition of the 1915 genocide are among the preconditions for Turkey entering the European Union.

The border between Turkey and Armenia was closed in 1993 because of the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, a Turkish ally, resulting from the dispute over control of Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkey chose then to close the border, and conditioned its reopening on a settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In October 2009 US State Secretary Hillary Clinton had played a prominent role at a ceremony in Zurich where Turkey and Armenia finalized prolonged negotiations by signing protocols relating to the establishment of full diplomatic relations and the reopening of their common border. But Turkish Prime minister Tayyib Erdogan made it clear soon after this event that the protocols would not be ratified by the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA) until Armenia began the process of withdrawal from occupied Azeri territory in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenian government argued that the two issues are independent of each other.

It is widely agreed that an open border would benefit landlocked Armenia's economy and Turkey's impoverished eastern regions. The U.S. government and World Bank economists have estimated that it would considerably accelerate Armenia's economic growth by reducing disproportionately high costs of transporting goods to and from the landlocked country. With the Turkish market closed to Armenian goods at present, Turkish imports make up the bulk of bilateral trade which is carried out via Georgia and Iran and estimated at about $100 million a year.

The Georgian ports of Batumi and Poti process at least 70 percent of cargo shipped to and from Armenia. These vital supply routes were temporarily disrupted during the Russian-Georgian conflict in August 2008. Turkey shut its borders to Christian Armenia in 1993 to protest against the capture by Armenian forces of territory inside Azerbaijan, Ankara's historic Muslim ally, during fighting over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Ankara said it will not reopen its frontier until Armenia reaches a peace agreement with Azerbaijan. The blockade, coupled with similar measures by Azerbaijan, means Armenia has to route its trade through its land border with Georgia, or over treacherous mountain passes that link it to Iran. Those difficulties greatly increase costs.

In 2008, at the initiative of the President of Armenian a new phase of Armenian-Turkish relations was started. Turkey and Armenia signed on 10 October 2009 historic accords restoring diplomatic relations and opening borders between the two countries. The documents were signed in Zurich by the Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers at a ceremony attended by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, Slovenian Foreign Minister Samuel Zbogar, and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. Armenia and Turkey agreed to a "roadmap" to normalize their relations under Swiss mediation. The draft pact between the countries has been backed by the United States and European Union.

However, after the Protocols were signed, Turkey abruptly changed its position and rejected to implement the agreements on the normalization of the relations within a reasonable timeframe and without any preconditions, linking the ratification of the Protocols in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey to the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. Taking into account the situation created by Turkey, as well as the call of the Political Council of the parties-members of the ruling coalition, on April 22, 2010 the President of the Republic of Armenia signed a decree on the suspension of the process of ratifications of the Protocols.

The French Senate passed the bill 23 January 2012 making it a crime to deny that the mass killings of Armenians by Turks nearly 100 years ago was genocide. The lower house had passed it in December 2011. A furious Turkey condemns the bill as discriminatory and racist. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Tuesday said Turkey will impose sanctions against France "step by step." He did not say what those sanctions will be. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan says France has reaffirmed its devotion to universal human values. He called it a historic day for Armenians all over the world, and praised Mr. Sarkozy for his personal commitment to the bill.