Workshop tackles road map in Armenian issue

With the prime minister’s statement that a solution to Nagorno-Karabakh must be found before opening the border with Armenia casting doubt on reconciliation, nongovernmental organizations have rolled up their sleeves to keep up momentum for reconciliation.

The Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research was one such think tank, as it initiated a two-day workshop between opinion makers from Turkey and Armenia in Istanbul, which started yesterday. Changes in international relations are not happening with traditional diplomacy, but different actors, such as businessmen and opinion makers, are also contributing to international developments, said one of the participants from Turkey. In this respect, participants discussed the road ahead both in bilateral relations and on the future of the Caucasus.

Even more complicated

At the end of the first day of discussions the two sides seemed to agree that progress on the reconciliation process between Armenia and Turkey looked even more difficult than two months ago, especially after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s visit to Azerbaijan.

Turkey and Armenia made a historic joint statement in April announcing to the world that they agreed on a road map to normalize relations. Following the reaction of Azerbaijan, which is in dispute with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, Erdoğan said resolution to the conflict was linked to the normalization, which was perceived as a setback to the reconciliation talks between Yerevan and Baku.

The Armenian participants repeated their frustration of sharing the last closed border in Europe, as well as what they describe as Turkish policy being taken hostage by Azerbaijan. The Turkish participants on the other hand took pains to soften Prime Minister Erdoğan’s statement, avoiding the use of the term "precondition."

One participant from Turkey said that Turkey’s initiatives toward Armenia were not motivated by increasing resolutions recognizing Armenians’ claims of genocide, but by the policy of the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, based on the motto "Zero problems with neighbors." "Turkey wants to correct an anomaly and reintegrate its neighborhood," he said. Recalling the Russia-Georgia war of last summer, the same participant said the status quo in the Caucasus was not sustainable, adding that the normalization process between Turkey and Armenia and the resolution to the frozen conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh should be mutually reinforcing each other.

While participants from Armenia seemed unanimous on the government’s position that there should be no precondition to normalization of relations with the exception of one participant, who said Turkey should recognize Armenians claims of genocide before there was normalization, the participants from the Turkish side differed on their views on the linkage between normalization and the resolution to Nagorno-Karabakh problem. Some of the Turkish participants agreed with their Armenian counterparts that if the normalization process were taken hostage by the Nagorno-Karabakh problem, there would not be any progress on the bilateral relations.