Last week RFE/RL reported that American-Analyst Richard Giragosian stated in Yerevan that the possible adoption of a Genocide resolution in the U.S. Congress would not affect U.S.-Turkey relations. Of more interest, however, and perhaps also of more relevance to Armenia rather than the Diaspora, Giragosian also stated that Turkey’s EU membership ambitions met Armenia’s interests because “the closer Turkey is to European standards, the safer and more predictable it becomes for Armenia.” He also raised concerns about Armenia’s continuing isolation in the region.

“If Europe rejects Turkey, it will shift away from looking west to the European Union and will return to the Pan-Turkic eastern vision,” Giragosian says. “The other important thing is that Turkey within the European Union brings the EU borders to Armenia.”

In terms of regional developments Giragosian is worried about Armenia’s isolation, while its neighbor Azerbaijan is developing closer relations with Central Asia and Georgia is moving closer to the West, the U.S. and NATO.

According to Giragosian, it is Russia and the United States rather than Turkey that are Azerbaijan’s closest military partners today.

Under the circumstances, Giragosian is as much worried about possible “Russian betrayal”.

The analyst says the opening of the border with Turkey and the end of the blockade will have positive economic effects of competition for Armenia. But adds: “It threatens many powerful people in Armenia, those who control the monopolies on different commodities.”

Nazarian posted an entry praising Giragosian for his analysis, describing them as “one of the very few serious efforts to analyze the situation” but which local journalists misreport or overlook because “[t]he majority of his views gets lost when the semi-competent journalists prepare their reports for print.” In the Diaspora, however, Giragosian’s words have ruffled a few feathers and not least among members of the nationalist Armenian Revolutionary Federation — Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D).

Boston’s The Armenian Weekly, for example, appears to now be engaging in a kind of “damage control.” It’s not really a newspaper and more of a mouthpiece for ARF-D propaganda, but it’s interesting reading nonetheless.

Reforms in Turkey are necessary, and here we refute [the] assertion that there is a difference of opinion between Armenians living inside and outside of Turkey. Diasporan Armenians don’t oppose Turkey’s bid to join the EU just for the sake of opposing it, but because they see reforms as a precondition for membership. There are differences of opinion regarding the changes that need to be made and how they should be implemented; for example, according to Diasporan Armenians, it is not enough for the Turkish government to give back the estates it robbed from the Armenians. Rather, one necessary precondition is Turkey’s acceptance of its history and its recognition of the genocide.

In the same context, we also reject Giragosian’s assertion that Turkey’s membership in the EU would have a positive effect because its borders would reach Armenia. It�s not important for Armenia to border the EU. What’s important for Armenia is to have a neighbor who doesn�t threaten its national security and right to exist.

Well, I suppose Giragosian’s point is exactly that. Turkey as a member of the European Union would not only open up the door to Europe for the three South Caucasus republics, but also provide the necessary security that Armenia feels it needs. Indeed, the prime minister, Serzh Sarkisyan, has also expressed the same opinion.

Turkey’s membership in the European Union would strengthen Armenia’s national security and bring the South Caucasus nation “geopolitically closer to Europe,” Defense Minister Serzh Sarkisian said in a newspaper article published on Friday.

Writing in “The Wall Street Journal,” Sarkisian said Ankara’s ongoing accession talks with the EU represent a new “long-awaited opportunity” to normalize Turkish-Armenian relations.

“In addition to building diplomatic ties between our two countries, we believe that in negotiating for membership — and perhaps as a future EU member state — Turkey will contribute to an economically stronger and more stable neighborhood,” he said. “This is in the interest of both Turkey and Armenia.

[…]

The comments highlighted the differing positions on the issue of official Yerevan and the Armenian Diaspora. The influential Armenian community in France is particularly vocal in opposing Turkish entry to the EU, saying that the bloc should not even consider Ankara’s membership bid as long as the latter refuses to acknowledge the 1915 Armenian genocide.

President Robert Kocharian argued in October that the accession talks will put Turkey under growing Western pressure to normalize relations with Armenia and reconsider its long-running policy of genocide denial. “In that sense, we don’t see any dangers in that process. Perhaps quite the opposite,” he said.

[…]

“The entry negotiations hold seeds of hope that the impasse between Turkey and Armenia can eventually be broken. If Turkey lifts the blockade of its border with Armenia, my small country becomes geopolitically closer to Europe,” he added.

Sarkisian, who is tipped to succeed Kocharian in 2008, also stressed that Yerevan stands for an unconditional normalization of ties between the two neighboring states. “That includes not tying the establishment of diplomatic relations to recognition of the genocide,” he said.

Interestingly, yesterday I ran into an American-Armenian writer, Meline Toumani, in town for the Pan-Armenian Games. Toumani is currently researching a book on Armenia, Turkey and the Diaspora and has some pretty controversial views on Armenian-Turkish relations when compared to those brought up in ARF-D circles. However, such opinions were refreshing, especially from someone who is conducting her research objectively and currently spending six months traveling around Turkey in order to do so.

Forget about politically partisan minority newspapers in the Boston-Armenian community, Toumani wrote a piece on Armenian-Turkish relations and Genocide-recognition for the Boston Globe published on Genocide Day, April 24, in 2005. It’s discussion like this that we really need.

For decades, Armenian groups, particularly those in the diaspora, have lobbied governments, news organizations, and academic institutions to officially label the events of 1915 as genocide, observing April 24 as the date the massacres began. (The Boston area is home to one of the largest communities of Armenian-Americans whose families were dispersed from Turkey following the genocide.) And while Turkey is a long way from such recognition, public discussion of the issue has reached unprecedented levels there in recent months, following recommendations from many European Union leaders that Turkey take steps to resolve the issue before becoming an EU member.

When the Workshop for Armenian-Turkish Scholarship held its fourth meeting last weekend in Salzburg, Austria, Turkish journalists were invited for the first time. Workshop members would like to see their work influence Armenian-Turkish relations, but they are adamant that scholarship and politics are separate enterprises. They also know from personal experience just how psychologically difficult it is for either side to take a neutral look at either history or current developments.

But following his visit, the New Jersey-based newspaper Armenian Reporter published a series of articles that accused Suny of being an agent of the Turkish state and questioned the intentions of Turkish and Armenian scholars who chose to work together. Suny replied with a blistering letter to the editor. ‘’What a colossal intellectual and political mistake it would be,'’ he wrote, ‘’for Armenians to slam the door in the face of those Turks who want to open a dialogue, who are prepared to take risks and suffer the consequences from their own government by proposing a fresh discussion of the events of 1915.'’

[…]

Suny welcomed colleagues to that first workshop at the University of Chicago by calling it ‘’a small, humble, and historic meeting'’ inspired by ‘’tolerance of difference on the basis of equality and respect, rather than exclusivist and insular nationalism.'’ The meeting was not without tension. Many Armenian scholars refused to attend, and some insisted (unsuccessfully) that participants sign a document stating that they recognized the genocide.

[…]

Simply asking these questions challenges not just Turkish orthodoxies but the mainstream Armenian attitude, which has been defined for many years by the quest for acknowledgment - for ‘’the G-word'’ - above all. Suny says this is not enough. ‘’If you don’t seek an explanation of why it occurred, it becomes a kind of racism,'’ he says. ‘’Then the explanation implied is that Turks are a pathological group of people who simply do these things.'’

Meanwhile, the latest influx of Dashnak-affiliated ethnic Armenians from the U.S. in particular are now attempting to introduce their form of Genocide politics here. Many of those who knew murdered Turkish-Armenian Hrant Dink, for example, still consider that the organizers of the small vigil held in Yerevan in January exploited his death for their own political purposes even though when he was alive they considered him a traitor to the “Armenian cause.”

Known to be in favor of Turkish-Armenian reconciliation, Dink was the complete opposite of those activists in the Diaspora and Armenia who are against Turkish EU accession and the normalization of relations between Ankara and Yerevan. I’ll have more on all of this in the near future, but in the meantime, for those of you who read Turkish, Hrant Dink’s Agos newspaper has an article on Meline Toumani in this week’s edition.

Hopefully it will be available in the English language section of their web site in the near future.