Turkey and Armenia: Thaw in a Century-Old Feud?
As ancient as Herodotus' Histories, the fast-flowing waters of the Aras river today trace the Turkish-Armenian border, a messy 20th century creation of broken bridges and shuttered rail tracks. In the shadow of snow-topped Mount Ararat, the river splits and narrows until it divides the verdant villages of Halikisla, on the Turkish side, and Bagaran, in Armenia. Once one, the villages are now separated by a stretch of water little wider than a double bed. Residents never meet, except to cast for trout under the watchful gaze of military guards or to return an errant cow.
Turkey and Armenia have been bitter enemies for almost a century, their tensions stemming from the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish army. Turkey has always denied that the killings constitute genocide. The two countries briefly shared an open border when an independent Armenia emerged from post-Soviet Russia in 1991, but two years later Turkey sealed the border in solidarity with Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia over the contested enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Now one of Europe's last closed frontiers may finally be reopening again. On Sept. 1, Turkey and Armenia announced a Swiss-mediated six-week negotiation period aimed at normalizing diplomatic relations. The goal is for both parliaments to ratify a deal by Oct. 14 — when the two countries are scheduled to play a World Cup soccer qualifier. The border could then reopen by the end of the year.
There is much at stake. Securing the Caucasus region, veined with oil and gas pipelines, has become a priority for both Russia and the U.S. The Obama Administration has signaled that helping to rebuild Turkish-Armenian ties is a foreign-policy priority. But history is a potent saboteur in this part of the world, and talks have collapsed before under its weight. Already hard-liners in both countries are furiously denouncing the new peace plan.
Armenian nationalists criticize their government in Yerevan for not making Turkey's recognition of the 1915 genocide a precondition for diplomatic normalization. Instead, the new plan calls for a commission of Armenian, Turkish and international experts to be established to study historical records and promote mutual dialogue.
In 1915, the Ottoman Turkish army, fighting against Russia to maintain its territories, sent the region's Armenian population, based largely in the east, on a "death march" toward Syria. Armenians say 1.5 million were killed in the genocide. But Turkey rejects the term, maintaining that the expulsion was a wartime measure necessary to quash Armenian nationalists, who sided with the Russians. Turks refer to the events as tehcir — a little-used Arabic word that means mass deportation. The recently published records of Talat Pasha, an Ottoman Turkish minister during the war, show that over the course of 1915, the Armenian population in 30 Anatolian cities decreased by 924,000 people, and in at least five eastern cities that had Armenian populations of more than 50,000, there were no Armenians left by the end of the year...
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Turkey and Armenia have been bitter enemies for almost a century, their tensions stemming from the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish army. Turkey has always denied that the killings constitute genocide. The two countries briefly shared an open border when an independent Armenia emerged from post-Soviet Russia in 1991, but two years later Turkey sealed the border in solidarity with Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia over the contested enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Now one of Europe's last closed frontiers may finally be reopening again. On Sept. 1, Turkey and Armenia announced a Swiss-mediated six-week negotiation period aimed at normalizing diplomatic relations. The goal is for both parliaments to ratify a deal by Oct. 14 — when the two countries are scheduled to play a World Cup soccer qualifier. The border could then reopen by the end of the year.
There is much at stake. Securing the Caucasus region, veined with oil and gas pipelines, has become a priority for both Russia and the U.S. The Obama Administration has signaled that helping to rebuild Turkish-Armenian ties is a foreign-policy priority. But history is a potent saboteur in this part of the world, and talks have collapsed before under its weight. Already hard-liners in both countries are furiously denouncing the new peace plan.
Armenian nationalists criticize their government in Yerevan for not making Turkey's recognition of the 1915 genocide a precondition for diplomatic normalization. Instead, the new plan calls for a commission of Armenian, Turkish and international experts to be established to study historical records and promote mutual dialogue.
In 1915, the Ottoman Turkish army, fighting against Russia to maintain its territories, sent the region's Armenian population, based largely in the east, on a "death march" toward Syria. Armenians say 1.5 million were killed in the genocide. But Turkey rejects the term, maintaining that the expulsion was a wartime measure necessary to quash Armenian nationalists, who sided with the Russians. Turks refer to the events as tehcir — a little-used Arabic word that means mass deportation. The recently published records of Talat Pasha, an Ottoman Turkish minister during the war, show that over the course of 1915, the Armenian population in 30 Anatolian cities decreased by 924,000 people, and in at least five eastern cities that had Armenian populations of more than 50,000, there were no Armenians left by the end of the year...