Genocide Anniversary Marked by Contradictory Signals from Turkey

This incident reminds us also of the episode involving President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s bodyguards in Washington in 2017, when they began beating peaceful demonstrators, ultimately triggering a diplomatic incident with the US.

It is not surprising that a Turkish court sentenced that nation’s most principled citizen, Osman Kavala, to life imprisonment, without the possibility of parole, the very same day as the Çavusoglu incident, with that nation thumbing its nose at the verdict of the European Court of Human Rights which had judged his imprisonment illegal and demanded his immediate release in 2019.

The reaction from Uruguay was swift, appropriate and dignified — much more so than the Armenian government’s reaction, which came only from the chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Relations of the ruling Civil Contract Faction Eduard Aghajanyan, who condemned the behavior of the Turkish diplomat.

“This is a reprehensible act. It in no way contributes to the formation of an atmosphere of mutual understanding and dialogue between the two peoples,” he said. In addition, some analysts did not rule out that this could have been Turkey’s attempt to provoke the Armenian government to jettison negotiation process. There was no reaction from Yerevan’s Foreign Ministry, possibly out of fear that it would rock the boat.

However, the reaction of Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou was more forceful and direct. He stated, “It is unfortunate that the Turkish foreign minister showed the Turkish ultra-nationalist Gray Wolves salute to a group of Armenians in Montevideo. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavusoglu’s conduct must be strongly criticized. The Armenian community is hurt and they are right.”

He also noted that advancing ties in commercial matters between his country and Turkey does not mean that they agree with the other side’s domestic or foreign policies. Later, the Turkish ambassador, Huseyin Muftuoglu, was summoned by the Foreign Ministry of Uruguay. Also, the vice president and the president of the parliament spoke at gatherings marking the Genocide and criticized Mr. Çavusoglu.

The Gray Wolves is a terrorist group banned in Austria and France, and has been involved in many terrorist acts, such as the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul and journalists Abdi Ipekçi and Hrant Dink.

Mr. Çavusoglu’s rash act has been balanced with President Erdogan’s equivocal address to the Armenian community in Turkey and through them to the world Armenian community.

For the last few years, Turkey’s president has addressed messages to the Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul, with the supposed intention of empathizing with the Armenians, concerning what he termed this year the “painful reality that took place during World War I.” And then, he continued, “I respectfully commemorate the deceased Ottoman Armenians, once again, and convey my sincere condolences to their surviving relatives.”

Next, he blamed the conditions created by the war rather than the Ittihadist government as the perpetrators of the deaths.

Then Mr. Erdogan advised, “Let’s build the future instead of magnifying the suffering.” Little does he know that the suffering is so immense that there is no room for magnifying it.

Turkey’s domestic economic woes and the dimming prospects for his reelection in 2023 have tamed Mr. Erdogan’s hubris in foreign adventures. At this point, he is trying to ingratiate himself with the Biden administration, the responsible party for the Armenian-Turkish rapprochement. Mr. Erdogan has been working overtime to restore relations with the US’s friends and allies in the Middle East, particularly with Egypt and Israel; good relations with Saudi Arabia and UAE have already paid off.

Despite Turkey’s intransigence in keeping Russian S-400 missiles, the US has been softening its stand on allowing it US F-16 fighter planes, and Washington is sending some signals it is willing to redirect gas pipelines through Turkey to Europe rather than through Greece.

In this delicate period, President Biden’s Armenian Genocide message, which for the second time uses the term “genocide,” has not been met with Turkish administration’s fury. There is not even the thought of recalling Turkey’s ambassador from Washington. Instead, Mr. Erdogan, contrary to his usual tenor, has reacted mildly, by stating, “Statements relating to the Armenian claims … are of no effect to us. This is how we see the statement of the US president and we do not even find it worth dwelling on because it is all based on lies and false information.”

Turkey’s minister of defense, Hulusi Akar, reacted in an even milder statement, saying Turkey’s “history is clear.”

Genocide commemorations and the controversies it has generated this year represent only one chapter of the ongoing Armenian-Turkish and Armenian-Azerbaijani negations. There is fear and apprehension in Armenia that the government is giving in too much at this stage, at the very start of the talks.

With the split among the co-chairs of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, France and the US have become more active in pulling Armenia towards the West and away from Russia. Russia, fearful of letting Armenia slip through its grasp, invited Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan last week to sign a 30-clause agreement, while moving the Karabakh issue and Turkish-Armenian relations into the format of 3+3: Russia, Turkey and Iran vs. Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. In that format, there is no party that can help formulate the Karabakh settlement favorably to Armenian interests. That is why Yerevan is joining the 3+3 format cautiously, on the condition of discussing Karabakh only in the OSCE format.

Unfortunately, regional and international developments are too complicated for Armenia’s foreign policy establishment to handle, while the domestic opposition has been agitating to make the government’s task even more challenging.

Armenia’s population is confused by the actions of an inept ruling party and a boisterous opposition which does not offer a viable political agenda.