The stated goals of the protocols are “to establish good neighborly relations and to develop bilateral cooperation in the political, economic, cultural and other fields for the benefit of their peoples” and for Turkey to open its borders with Armenia and establish diplomatic ties.
Both Turkey’s and Armenia’s parliaments must ratify the protocols in order form them to be implemented.
Armenia gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Turkey unilaterally blockaded Armenia in 1993, closing the border between the countries as a result of the Karabagh conflict. Armenia and Turkey announced in late summer 2009 that they would hold diplomatic talks in order to take a major step toward reconciliation. Switzerland has been the main mediator in the talks. Both the United States and Russia have been deeply involved in putting pressure on Armenia to accept the protocols.
The signing ceremony was stalled for three hours due to last-minute disagreements on both sides. The reason for the deal was due to Armenia’s objection to remarks that the Turkish delegation was going to read at the conclusion of the signing. It was thought that the Turkish delegation was going to make remarks casting doubt on the Armenian Genocide. United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton engaged in intense discussion between the two sides in order for them to complete the signing ceremony. Once the protocols were signed, neither Armenia nor Turkey made any statements, and according to an on-site correspondent, this silence was one of the compromises arranged by United States officials.
The protocols that have been signed by Armenia and Turkey have raised an enormous wave of criticism and protest in Armenian communities around the world, in particular in the Armenian communities outside Armenia proper. After the signing, protests by Armenians took place in Armenia, France, Lebanon, and the United States. The factor that instigated the most protest was the claim that by failing to include in the protocols a recognition of the Armenian Genocide, Turkey was continuing its decades-long policy of denial of the basic historical facts of the genocide, and that it would humiliate and weaken the Armenian people to be party to an agreement that would imply confirmation of the denial. Furthermore, the protocols called for the establishment of an historical commission, to determine “what really happened” in the Armenian Genocide, and it is felt that calls for such commissions are a long-standing tactic of Turkish denial which should not be honored. On the other hand, the protocols do indeed open the borders between Armenia and Turkey, thus providing a lifeline for renewed development of Armenia and conveying a new level of recognition of the Armenia state.
A second clause in the protocols addresses the “inviolability” of borders and seeks ratification of existing international borders. This is widely viewed by Armenians as an attempt to have Armenia ratify the 1921 Treaty of Kars, which would result in permanently ceding territory taken from Armenia by Turkey.
The editor of The California Courier, Harut Sassounian, who is also President of the United Armenian Fund, has been adamant in his opposition to the protocols. Nonetheless, alongside of his own editorial column in the issue of the Courier in which story of the ratification of the protocols appeared, Sassounian also published a critical evaluation of the protocols by another writer, Michael Hachigian, examining both the “advantages and the disadvantages on either side of…the dilemma” of the protocols. The author concludes, “It is a difficult decision no matter which side you are on.”
Adding to the opposition to the Armenia-Turkey Protocols, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) launched a new campaign of street protests aimed at scuttling the implementation of the Turkish-Armenian agreements signed in October, 2009. The federation had already held a series of demonstrations in Yerevan this fall in protest against the Turkish-Armenian protocols, which it considers a sell-out. The nationalist party is particularly unhappy with Yerevan’s formal recognition of the existing Turkish-Armenian border and its acceptance of a Turkish proposal to set up a joint commission of historians.
On January 12, 2010, Armenia’s Constitutional Court upheld the legality of the controversial normalization agreement Armenian signed with Turkey last October, while groups opposed to the deal to continued to stage protests. The ruling read out by the court chairman, Gagik Harutiunian, concluded that the provisions of the two Turkish-Armenian protocols “conform to the constitution of the Republic of Armenia.”
The widely anticipated verdict paved the way for the agreements’ ratification by the Armenian parliament. The National Assembly is not expected, however, to start debating the two protocols before their endorsement by Turkey’s parliament.
“Eduard Sharmazanov, the chief spokesman for President Sarkisian’s Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) insisted that the Western-backed agreements provide for an unconditional normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations. “The Turkish side must be the first to ratify them because it’s the Turkish side that has always talked in the language of preconditions and ultimatums,” he said.
