By David Stepanyan, Yerevan. Exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
On May 27th Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan invited his Turkish counterpart to visit Yerevan on April 24th 2015 to take part in marking the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. It was an attempt to revive “football diplomacy.” Such conclusions are inevitable, considering that the “invitation” was made in the context of absolutely no negotiating process and what seems to be the eternally-frozen Zurich Protocols signed by Turkey and Armenia in 2010. Today Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic relations, their 330-kilometer border has been closed since 1993.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on the eve of April 24 that the slaughter and mass deportations of Armenians in 1915 were “our common pain.” Responding to an independent member of parliament from Istanbul, Ihsan Barutcun, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that “Turkey will work against international recognition of the Armenian Genocide in the diplomatic, legal and scientific fields.” The foreign minister characterized the PM’s message as part of a common strategy. Thus, Ankara continues insisting that there was no genocide in 1915 and refuses to use the term officially.
Nonetheless, the invitation caused a burst of emotions and numerous comments from Armenian experts and politicians. Sergey Minasyan, deputy head of the Caucasus Institute, is steadfast that the invitation sets conditions that could make Ankara recognize the tragedy, especially considering that the presidential polls in turkey will be held in autumn 2014. in his opinion, the position of Yerevan demonstrates to the international community, and most importantly to Turkish society, that Armenia is ready to make concessions to Turkey, keeping in mind and commemorating the victims of the 1915 events. The political analyst assumes that external and internal conditions may encourage Ankara to give a positive response to the Armenian president.
Kiro Manoyan, a member of the Dashnaktsutyun Bureau, characterized the invitation as a challenge that Ankara would most likely ignore. Vladimir Karapetyan, the head of the commission for foreign relations of the Armenian National Congress, recommended Sargsyan to evaluate his own failed policy for recognition of the genocide instead of making invitations. He reminded that not a single country had recognized the genocide in the past four years. In his view, the six years of Serzh Sargsyan’s initiative have only proved detrimental to Armenian-Turkish relations.
Ara Papyan, a Turkologist and the director of the Modus Vivendi Analytical Center, characterized the invitation as a strange action, serving, in the terms of “football diplomacy”, to move the ball to the Turkish side of the pitch. Papyan emphasized that Ankara accepting the invitation would be the only justification for it.
