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Adapted from: Richard
G. Hovannisian "Historical Memory and Foreign Relations:
The Armenian
HISTORICAL
MEMORY AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Richard G. Hovannisian
Armenian Educational Foundation Chair in Modern Armenian History University
of California, Los Angeles As
Armenia and the Armenian Diaspora face the twenty-first century, there is the
challenge of learning more about many unresolved issues of history.
These subjects go far beyond the realm of academic investigation and
analysis to become an integral part of national self-perception and national
interest. If, for example, I were
asked what historical questions I would want clarified in this century,
my list would certainly include the following subjects:
Armenian ethnogenesis, that is, just exactly who are the Armenians and
whence did they come; the
detailed structure and composition of Armenian ancient and medieval society;
the underpinnings and multifaceted evaluation of the Armenian enlightenment (zartonk) and emancipatory (azatagrakan)
movements; the dynamics of Armenian-Turkish and especially
Dashnaktsutiun-Ittihadist (Young Turk) relations from the turn of the century
to 1915; the actual decision-making processes in the Armenian Genocide; the
unpublished evidence collected but never used against the organizers of the
genocide; the political, military, and individual personality factors in the
evolution of Soviet-Turkish
relations as they affected the first Armenian republic; the transparent and concealed aspects of the repatriation campaign of the 1940s,
and so forth.
For this presentation, however, I
shall consider the relationship between historical memory and
foreign relations of the new Armenian republic.
It may be that, however
much the Armenian leadership may wish to surmount the obstacles posed by
historical memory in order to operate freely, the past repeatedly emerges to
color the collective sense of right and wrong, of good and evil, and thereby
to place limits on acceptable parameters of
foreign policy. The spirit
of the past looms over the Armenian people. The Karabagh crisis and pogroms
and ethnic cleansing in Azerbaijan, for example,
immediately conjured up direct associations with the Armenian Genocide
in the Ottoman Empire, a calamity that occurred decades earlier but still
lurks just beneath the surface in Armenia’s dealings with Turkey and
Azerbaijan. A cursory survey of
past and present as affecting Armenia in its relations with its immediate
neighbors, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Georgia, and Iran, with Russia, and with the
West may elucidate these introductory comments . ARMENIA
AND AZERBAIJAN
Historical
memory intensifies the mutual distrust of Armenians and Azerbaijanis, who
while sharing many everyday customs, come from different racial, religious,
and socio-cultural backgrounds. Ethnic-racial
tensions also have economic and class components.
The sporadic mutual violence of the twentieth century contributed to
the shaping of the national consciousness of the two peoples.
The so-called “Armeno-Tatar War” of 1905-07, for example, became an
important test of arms for the clandestine Armenian political parties and a
clarion to the leaders of the Turkic population—later called Azerbaijanis—to
develop their own professional and entrepreneurial classes rather than
continue to depend on Christian and Jewish elements for such services.
Following the Armenian Genocide in
the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish armies invaded the Caucasus in 1918, now
victimizing the Russian or Eastern Armenians.
Most Muslims, on the other hand, regarded the Turks as a kindred people
and natural allies; it was with critical Turkish assistance that the Republic
of Azerbaijan came into existence in mid-1918.
After the Sovietization of Azerbaijan in 1920, Azerbaijani leaders and
intellectuals routinely condemned the Musavat government of the independent
republic and glorified the multinational Baku Commune of 1918 headed by Stepan
Shahumian, an Armenian. The
violent clashes between the Baku Soviet's armed forces and insurgent Turko-Azerbaijani
detachments in the so-called March Days resulted in the latter’s defeat.
Yet Soviet Azerbaijani historians had to portray the anti-Soviet
elements, that is, their own people, as reactionaries, just as they had to
show the fall of Baku to the Turkish imperial armies in September of 1918 as a
victory for the forces of
reaction. In recent years these
interpretations have been subject to radical revision, as a rapid de-Shahumianization
of Azerbaijan has taken place in stride with the equally rapid de-Armenianization
of the entire country.
In fact, most recently the government of Heydar Aliyev has reversed the
assessment of the March Days to proclaim to the world that the Azerbaijanis
were in fact the victims of a
genocide perpetrated by the Armenians. If the new Republic of Azerbaijan proclaimed in 1991 is reevaluating the role of the Musavat Party and the first Republic, it has not altered the view of the Dashnakist-dominated first Armenian republic. In fact, from Baku’s perspective the struggle over Nagorno-Karabagh has been Dashnakist in spirit if not entirely in body, a view reinforced by the engagement of Karabagh-based armed units of that party. The hostilities all along the borders from Getashen in the north to Meghri and Nakhichevan in the south from 1988 to 1994 were reminiscent of the incessant clashes of 1918-20. And if the Armenian militia opened the “Lachin corridor” in 1992, the same was also true at the end of 1918, when Andranik (Ozanian) broke through the Kurdo-Azerbaijani lines and approached Shushi (Azerbaijani: Shusha), only to be coerced into drawing back to Zangezur by British and French officers who announced that the world war was over and that the Paris Peace Conference would surely take the will of the inhabitants into consideration in determining the future status of the region. Again, in 1920 the military titan Dro (Drastamat Kanayan) advanced to the vicinity of Shushi, only to withdraw because of the Sovietization of Azerbaijan and the assurances given by Sergo Ordzhonikidze’s messengers regarding a just solution to the Karabagh conflict. The sense of being tricked both in 1918 and in 1920 now reinforces Armenian distrust of any terms or settlement that would require withdrawal or disarmament prior to implementation of iron-clad, permanent guarantees.
The Karabagh crisis stems,
inter alia, from the confrontation of two underlying concepts of
international law: territorial integrity of states (inviolability of
frontiers) and self-determination of peoples.
The questions arise whether any people has the inherent right to secede
from an internationally recognized state and at what point do legal,
historical, cultural, and ethnic bases for such claims warrant consideration.
This issue brings into question the very nature of the state, the
limitation of sovereignty, and the right of a group to define its own
nationality. Both Armenians and
Azerbaijanis pose historical, cultural, economic, demographic, and strategic
arguments to demonstrate that Nagorno-Karabagh is an inalienable part of their
national patrimony and that the other side is the blatant aggressor. The
Armenians go further still and stress that, even on the principle of
territorial integrity, Azerbaijan has no right to Karabagh, as the district
was in constant dispute during the period of the first republics (1918-20) and
was then assigned by a central organ of the Russian Communist Party to Soviet
Azerbaijan, which had no juridical standing under international law.
The political debate and military
conflict have their counterparts in the Armenian and Azerbaijani academies of
sciences, which have taken the dispute back to the very origins of the people
of Karabagh. In their
self-definition, the Azerbaijanis have tended to emphasize their Turkic
character, especially when this is put in competition with Iranian
cultural-religious influences. Yet
when the issue revolves around Mountainous Karabagh, the Azerbaijanis assert
that they are also the descendants of the ancient Caucasian Albanians, who, it
is argued, were the victims of Armenian political, cultural, and religious
imperialism, and forcibly Armenianized. Hence,
the native Karabagh population is not Armenian at all, and, by a somewhat
creative interpretation, many who are identified as Armenian in Karabagh are
actually Azerbaijanis, progeny of the Caucasian Albanians. The Azerbaijani
Academy has gone so far as to identify ancient and medieval Armenian Christian
monuments, including the khachkars
or commemorative cross-stones, as being Turko-Azerbaijani works and most
recently to assert that the Caucasian Albanians adopted Christianity long
before the Armenians. The process
of active revisionism only serves to heighten indignation and inflame
passions.
The Armenians trace their presence
in Karabagh to the ancient Artashesian dynasty and even earlier and maintain
that the highland has always been geographically, demographically, and
culturally integral to the Armenian patrimony.
For them, the underpinning of the current problem is a matter of
organic unity—that is, the
ethnic, cultural, confessional identity of the Karabagh population with the
rest of Armenia. They believe that in modern times both Andranik and Dro were
duped and insist that this mistake must not be repeated. Once Andranik had
withdrawn to Zangezur, the British commander in Baku allowed the formation of
a temporary Azerbaijani administration in Karabagh pending the ruling of the
Paris Peace Conference. Continued
resistance of the Karabagh Armenians prompted the Azerbaijani authorities to a
series of measures, which were once more to be exercised by a subsequent
generation beginning in 1988: 1) threats and intimidation; 2) forceful means
to disarm the population; 3) legislation dissolving the previous
administrative bodies and incorporating the region directly into Azerbaijan;
4) an economic blockade against
both Mountainous Karabagh and the Armenian republic to demonstrate their
vulnerability and exact political-territorial concessions; 5)
military action to break the defiance of the Karabagh Armenians.
The temporary and conditional
submission of the Karabagh Armenians in 1919 did not diminish the repression
or discontent, which culminated in an abortive Armenian uprising in March
1920. The Azerbaijani forces took
revenge by putting to sword and fire many Armenian villages and especially the
great fortress city and economic-cultural center of Shushi.
The historic memory of these events is ever present. For Karabagh
Armenians, mediation, intercession, and intervention have no meaning if these
are predicated on the continued wrongful territorial integrity of Azerbaijan
or the Armenian withdrawal from the occupied territories in exchange for vague
promises of cultural and political autonomy.
The Stepanakert Armenian administration has been adamant on this point,
even when it has seemed that the Erevan government might be willing to
compromise.
The swirl of events and measures
and countermeasures beginning in 1988 led in September 1991 to the declaration
of the separate Republic of Mountainous Karabagh (Artsakh), inclusive of the
Shahumian district. The unilateral declaration, following Azerbaijan’s
withdrawal from the USSR, was justified in conformity with the USSR’s
constitutional regulations according to which any autonomous formation within
a republic’s jurisdiction could determine its own future if the republic
opted to secede from the Soviet Union. On
its part, the Baku government responded in November 1991 by dissolving the
Nagorno-Karabakh Oblast (autonomous region) and
declaring that it was no different from any other part of Azerbaijan proper.
Following a referendum in December 1991 in which nearly 100 percent of
the more than 82 percent of the registered voters cast ballots in favor of
independence, the legislature formally proclaimed the independence of the
Republic in January 1992. As
a reply, the Azerbaijani heavy artillery and missile launchers unleashed a
ferocious bombard-ment from the commanding heights of Shushi, and for a time
it seemed that the inhabitants of the capital, Stepanakert, and the
surrounding villages were doomed. But
the Armenians showed surprising resilience, and in May they fought their way
up the mountainside and took possession of Shushi.
The crisis in Karabagh contributed to the downfall of Azerbaijan’s
last Communist head of state, Ayaz Mutalibov, and the elevation of Popular
Front leader Abulfaz Elchibey, who promised upon his election in mid-1992 that
Azerbaijan would restore control over Shushi and the rest of Karabagh within
two months. The following
Azerbaijani offensive was initially encouraging, as the entire Shahumian
district and northern Karabagh were occupied in a single sweeping operation
Once again, however, Stepanakert held out, and in 1993 the Armenians
regained most of the territory in the north and struck boldly into the
strategic Kelbajar district, which was separating Karabagh from the eastern
border of Armenia along Lake Sevan.
Measured by its political,
economic, and military limitations, the Armenian government, it might seem,
should be seeking an accommodation with Azerbaijan, which has three times as
much territory, twice as many people, and many times more the resources, as
well as the support of powerful Turkey and increasingly of the multinational
corporations. Until the spring of
1993, the Armenian government repeatedly denied active involvement in the
conflict and insisted that any negotiations should include the Karabagh
Armenians as direct participants. Despite
strong pressure from Karabagh and from within Armenia itself, the government
of Levon Ter-Petrosian consistently refused to recognize the Karabagh
republic, reasoning that such an act would further complicate matters.
Hence, Armenia’s official position has been that it has no
territorial claims against Azerbaijan and that the issue is one of
self-determination of the region’s inhabitants.
In the aftermath of the Kelbajar operation and the reprimands from the
United States and the United Nations, Armenian spokesmen became more assertive
in their declarations about the right of the Karabagh Armenians to defend
themselves and even about Armenia’s direct assistance.
When Ter-Petrosian’s partisans in
Karabagh at last gained ascendancy over elements associated with the
party Dashnaktsutiun, the Stepanakert administration fell into the hands of
Robert Kocharian, who later became Karabagh’s president and then prime
minister and in 1998 the president of the Republic of Armenia, sending into
disarray long-standing Armenian pronouncements on Karabagh’s separate and
distinct status.
In 1994, a cease-fire was put in
place which demonstrated that the Armenians had won the day on the field of
battle and managed to keep strategic contiguous territories under military
occupation. The fact that
Karabagh was made a separate party to the agreement is significant.
Various plans for peace have since been put forward, including the
step-by-step approach, which ostensibly was the cause for Levon Ter-Petrosian’s
forced resignation. The concept
of a “common state” subsequently advanced by the Minsk Group of countries
representing the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was
accepted by Armenia and Karabagh as the basis for negotiations but rejected by
Azerbaijan. Thereafter, direct
meetings between President Aliyev and President Kocharian have taken place,
but the October 1999 political assassinations in Armenia interrupted the flow
of the process. The Istanbul
summit of the OSCE at the end of 1999 continued to give precedence to
territorial integrity over self-determination, although this was not
specifically mentioned in the paragraph on Mountainous Karabagh.
A number of possible solutions to
the crisis have been offered, including territorial exchanges of
various kinds, both on and off the official agendas.
Visits by Western diplomats have been marked by “stick and carrot”
diplomacy, as strong pressure for concessions is accompanied by talk of
post-conflict rehabilitation, financial incentives, economic development, and
pipeline proposals. These maneuvers must be viewed within the context of
competition between an evolving east-west (Azerbaijani-Turkish-U.S.) corridor
and a Russian-dominated north-south axis.
Whatever the current situation,
there still has to be worked out a solution to the conflicting principles of
territorial integrity and self-determination, and the historical record has
only served to harden the position of each side.
The impasse may be broken by a long period of mutual attrition, the
military intervention of external forces, or the realization by both sides
that neither can have everything and each must give something.
The series of consultations between President Aliyev and President
Kocharian give rise to speculation that some acceptable deal may be in the
works, yet historical memory hangs heavily over the beautiful, often
fog-shrouded highland of Karabagh. ARMENIA
AND TURKEY
Armenia’s
most powerful, most populous, and most problematic neighbor is the Republic of
Turkey. With nearly 60 million people, an enormous military complex,
and well-grounded diplomatic and economic ties worldwide, Turkey has been able
to pass almost at will as a part of Europe, of Asia, of the Islamic world, or
of any useful combination of these. Ironically, Turkey is in a position to
release Armenia from severe economic and political difficulties by virtue of
the developed transportation routes that reach right up to the Armenian
border. Its reluctance to
establish diplomatic relations with Armenia and its oblique methods of
hindering the flow of supplies from other countries were effectively
manifested during the bleak winter of 1992-93, as landlocked Armenia shivered
in the dark with only a trickle of natural gas and oil from abroad.
The administration of President Ter-Petrosian seemed to do its utmost
to normalize relations with Turkey, yet by the end of 1992, it had become
clear that in the matter of permitting the transit of foreign humanitarian aid
to Armenia, the Turkish government was adept at avoiding a negative reply
without, however, taking affirmative action.
Armenians saw in the Turkish strategy the logical continuation of the
long-term policy to keep Armenia helpless and vulnerable and perhaps, at the
convenient moment, to seize upon an excuse to eliminate even the little that
was left of the historic Armenian territories.
For most Armenians, Turkey represents the genocidal regime par excellence, having eliminated entire ethno-religious groups and confiscated their personal and collective wealth without any subsequent contrition, recompense, or redemption. On the contrary, much of Turkey’s political and economic energies have gone into a worldwide campaign of denial of the Armenian Genocide and of recasting the blame so that it will fall upon the Armenians. Even fleeting references to past Armenian suffering in Turkey warrant concerted action to expunge the record. Multi-layered disinformation is employed with the objective of winning worldwide absolution and acceptance.
Memory of the Armenian Genocide
lived on in Soviet Armenia even when considerations of Soviet-Turkish
relations made it a forbidden topic. Historical memory might have been partially controlled or
channeled, but it could not be
suppressed among the populace regardless of the interests of the central
government. In the final decades
of Soviet rule in Armenia, the genocide was memorialized in monuments,
sculpture, and painting; in drama, prose, and poetry, and in towns, villages,
and city quarters named after places in the lost homeland. The daily sight of
Mount Ararat teases the Armenians—there to see but not to touch.
The Turks are generally regarded as the scourge of history.
They overran Armenia starting in the eleventh century and continued
thereafter to swarm into the area, destroying the Armenian way of life and
making the Armenians second-class subjects and despised infidels, gavurs. The widespread
massacres of Sultan Abdul-Hamid during the final years of the nineteenth
century were only the precursor of the much more efficient and sweeping death
machine of the Young Turks in the early twentieth century. In the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict, Turkey initially declared neutrality, although it soon became evident that Ankara was lending not only moral but also substantial military support to Baku and staunchly defending the Azerbaijani position in international diplomatic circles. Armenian-Turkish relations in the new period of Armenian independence thus did not get off to a good start. In its declaration of intent to attain national sovereignty eventually, the Armenian legislature in August 1990 adopted a platform that included international recognition of the genocide but made no mention of redress or restoration. If the intent of the declaration’s measured tone was to avoid a direct affront to Turkey, it failed. The Turkish press and foreign ministry were quick to note that, if previously it was the Armenian Diaspora dominated by the Dashnaks which had conducted a hate campaign against Turkey, this deplorable behavior had now become a pan-Armenian characteristic.
In fact, however, as Armenia moved
toward independence under the direction of the All-Armenian Movement, there
was a clear understanding that a modus
vivendi with Turkey was essential. In
stressing the need for Armenia to separate from Russia, some intellectuals
insisted that there was no “third force,” that is, Turkish menace, in the
Caucasus. While subsequent events tempered that view, the Armenian
leadership lives under no illusions of being able to wrest away any present
Turkish territory or of making significant attainable demands.
From the outset, the Armenian government has sought to normalize
relations with Turkey and, in so doing, let it be known that acknowledgment of
the events of the past would not be made a precondition.
If
Armenian strategy was to downplay the genocide and accept that no
specific conditions existed for the establishment of diplomatic relations, it
was the Turkish side that now insisted on preconditions.
Not content with the implicit Armenian silence on the genocide, the
Ankara government flexed its political muscle in an attempt to exact an
explicit renunciation from Armenia in 1992, threatening to veto Armenia’s
membership in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE)
unless the Erevan government recognized the territorial integrity of Turkey
and the Treaty of Kars of 1921 establishing the current boundaries and put
aside the issue of an alleged genocide. A
flurry of Armenian diplomacy forced the Turkish side to retreat, resulting in
simultaneous but separate Armenian and Turkish declarations
d’interpretation as Armenia entered the CSCE.
The two sides again locked on the
issue of Nagorno-Karabagh at the meeting of the CSCE foreign ministers in
Helsinki in March 1992. The
Armenian foreign minister cautioned that if Karabagh was not included as a
party to the negotiations and if Turkey did not assume a position of
neutrality, the peace process would be jeopardized.
Turkey had repeatedly violated its pledge of neutrality, both at the
conference table and on the battlefield and seemed to take diplomatic
positions more extreme even than those of the Azerbaijanis themselves.
Throughout 1992 and especially in 1993, President Turgut Ozal
repeatedly condemned the Armenians as the perpetrators of genocidal warfare,
and there were many Turko-Azerbaijani manifestations of solidarity. Turkey
provided a steady flow of financial and military assistance, and Turkish
volunteers and officers were confirmed as being in the ranks of the
Azerbaijani armed forces. The Armenian offensive in Kelbajar in 1993
precipitated a Turkish show of force along the Armenian border, intense
diplomatic activity abroad, and threats of unilateral intervention in the
conflict.
Even with these alarming acts, the
Ter-Petrosian government continued to believe that there was no other way to
diminish reliance on Russia and gain entry as an equal into the world
community without the regularization of relations with Turkey.
Mutually advantageous economic and diplomatic relations might in time
engender an atmosphere in which the Turks themselves would be willing to come
to terms with their history. Such
calculations were derailed by continuation of the Karabagh conflict, as Turkey
took the lead in efforts to isolate Armenia in every way.
Armenia and especially the Karabagh Armenians were deeply resentful of
President Ozal’s scarcely-veiled
threats about the “lessons of 1915.”
Many Armenians were outraged by President Ter-Petrosian’s decision to
attend Ozal’s funeral in Ankara after his sudden death a few days later.
Following the Armenian victories
in Karabagh and the cease-fire in 1994, the government of Suleyman Demirel
showed itself to be somewhat more tactful, although Demirel himself referred
to Armenia as being a “wedge” in the Turkish world.
What is significant is that the underlying Turkish strategy has
remained unchanged, as demonstrated in Demirel’s direct exchanges both with
Ter-Petrosian and Kocharian. On
his part, President Kocharian evoked a storm of
criticism in Turkey by using the term “Armenian Genocide.”
Even though, as some would argue,
his declarations in the United Nations and other bodies calling for
recognition of the genocide by the international community may in part be
intended to shore up support for an administration beset by many
socio-economic and political problems and especially with a less-than-positive
public image, such a position cannot but feed the deep suspicions and
anxieties of the Ankara government. The
unofficial economic and transportation links, including weekly air service
between Istanbul and Erevan and the arrival of many Armenian travelers in
Turkey with one-month visitor permits issued at a Georgian-Turkish gateway,
may figure in some mild relaxation of the tension, but these are paralleled in
word and deed by continuation of a hard-line position and
refusal to engage in normal relations.
Despite the consistent Armenian objective of attaining a modus
vivendi with Turkey and the emergence of isolated Turkish voices calling
for recognition of the Armenian Genocide, the ghost of the past is alive and
active in Armenian-Turkish relations. This
reality makes all the more critical the positions of Armenia’s two
non-Turkish neighbors—Georgia and Iran. ARMENIA
AND GEORGIA
The
Georgians, like the Armenians, are Christians, and the two neighboring peoples
have lived without major armed conflict down through the centuries.
Both of them, unlike the Azerbaijanis, boast a series of national
dynasties dating back to the pre-Christian era.
When feeling oppressed by Russian or Soviet rule, they often intimated
their own superiority by tactfully making it known that their civilizations
were flourishing at a time when the Slavic peoples were still wanderers in the
forests and that their national Christian churches predate the Russian
Orthodox Church by several centuries.
The endless invasions of the
Armenian Plateau eventually resulted in the virtual disappearance of the
Armenian nobility or nakharar class,
the backbone of the Armenian defense system. By the fourteenth century, only vestiges of that class
remained in remote highland areas such as Karabagh.
The Georgian nobility, on the other hand, stayed intact and continued
to exist after the Russian annexation of the several Georgian principalities
at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Tiflis, now Tbilisi, became the
Russian administrative center of the Caucasus and remained so through much of
the Soviet period. Georgian nationalists regard the Turkish Black Sea littoral up to Trebizond (Lazistan) as a part of their historic patrimony but this has not interfered with the establishment of cordial Turkish-Georgian relations. At times of high Armenian-Turkish tension, the Ankara government has taken precautions to assure Tbilisi that it has no hostile or aggressive designs against Georgia. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Turkey acted swiftly to open the borders with Georgia as a part of its general penetration into the Caucasus and Central Asia. Both Turkey and the United States are providing economic, political, and military support as a means to wean Georgia away from Russia, albeit Russia still maintains bases in Georgia and holds an important lever in Abkhazia. President Eduard Shevardnadze has pursued active oil diplomacy, influencing the decision to lay the international pipeline from Baku through Georgia to the port of Ceyhan in Turkey, and his government has become one of the initiators of the GUUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Moldova) association of former Soviet states collaborating on matters involving common economic and security interests. These developments from Ankara’s point of view have the double advantage of disengaging Georgia from Russia and obviating the specter of a north-south Georgian-Armenian-Iranian barrier to the east-west Turkish axis.
Not only has a relatively
successful Turkish policy toward Georgia, supported by Western industrial and
political circles, borne fruit but it has put a strain on what might seem to
be a natural Georgian-Armenian community of interests.
This situation is not immune to the gravity of historical memory.
During the century of Russian imperial rule, the Armenian element in the
Caucasus grew rapidly and included highly motivated classes of entrepreneurs
and capitalists. While most
Armenians remained poor peasants, large numbers of urban Armenians dominated
the arts, crafts, trade, and professions in Tiflis, Baku, and other Caucasian
cities. The Armenian presence in
Georgia had been strong long before the Russian annexations, and this became
even more pronounced in the nineteenth century. Because the franchise privilege was based on property
ownership, Armenians came to dominate the Tiflis city hall, and with the
influx of Russian inhabitants, the Georgians were relegated to a minority in
their own historic capital. Armenian
educational, cultural, economic, professional, religious, and social
institutions prevailed in Tiflis, which boasted
the largest Armenian population of the Russian Empire.
It was not by accident that Tiflis became the foremost center of
Armenian intellectual and political life.
Georgian resentment of Armenian
inroads found an effective response through the Georgian Menshevik Party,
which during the period of the first Georgian republic, 1918-21, was able to
utilize the mantle of internationalism and social and economic reforms to
dispossess and neutralize the Armenians. Following the Bolshevik revolution in
1917 and the Turkish invasion of the Caucasus in 1918, the Georgian leaders
took advantage of German protection to dissolve an ineffective, fleeting
Transcaucasian federative state and to proclaim their independence in May
1918. By this act, Georgia
abandoned the Armenians to their fate against the advancing Turkish armies.
It was a self-saving measure that nonetheless continues to generate
Armenian skepticism regarding the behavior of the current Georgian leadership. During
the period of the Georgian republic and continuing into Soviet Georgia, the
corresponding Armenian governments were frustrated by what they perceived as
Georgian manipulative practices to act as the regional balance of power,
capitalizing on Armenian-Azerbaijani dissonance to perpetuate Georgian
ascendancy. Not only was
Armenian political, economic, and intellectual control of Tiflis eliminated,
but the remaining Armenians complained bitterly of discrimination and
exclusion from many positions for which they were eminently qualified.
The imposing Armenian mansions along Golovinskii (Lenin) Prospect were
confiscated, and the number of operational Armenian churches in Tiflis
declined from 27 to only 2. The
continued exodus of Armenians from Georgia has not allowed a natural growth in
their numbers, the figure remaining relatively constant at somewhat more than
a half million, while the population of the country has nearly tripled.
By the 1960s the Georgians had finally become an absolute majority in
their capital city, Tbilisi. In
Armenian-Georgian relations there is also a territorial dimension, although
not of the scope of the Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute.
The southern rim of Georgia along the northern frontier of Armenia,
Akhalkalak (Javakhk/Javakheti) was a
part of the historic Armenian principality of Gugarak or Gugark, but it was
also ruled by the Georgian branch
of the Bagratuni royal family before it passed under Turkish domination for a
long period until the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-29.
The district is populated largely by Armenians, many of whom are
descendants of Western Armenians from Erzerum who immigrated there after the
annexation of Akhalakalak and neighboring Akhaltsikh (Akhaltskha) by the
Russian Empire. During the period
of the first independent republics, the dispute over Akhalkalak and the
contiguous districts of Lori and Ardahan strained Armenian-Georgian relations,
and in December 1918 the two sides even engaged in a brief military conflict.
Nonetheless, the Armenian-Georgian territorial contest was relatively
contained, and by 1920 there were strong indications that a compromise
solution would soon be reached, especially if the Armenian republic were to
expand westward into the Turkish Armenian territories awarded by the Treaty of
SPvres.
The
question of an Armenian outlet to the port of Batum (Batumi) was more complex.
The Allied Powers wanted Armenia to have a narrow strip of land along
the Chorokh River for a railroad from Kars to Batum, where Armenia would have
its own quay and facilities. The
Georgians resisted ceding a belt of territory (en
toute propriJtJ)
and maintained that the existing railway system from Batum to Tiflis and
thence to Erevan was sufficient to meet Armenia's needs. This maneuver was regarded as a strategy to keep the Armenian
republic economically vulnerable. The
Georgians were roundly criticized by the European peacemakers, but
in the end their adamancy bore results, as the last Allied battalions
withdrew from Batum in mid-1920 and the Georgian army and civil administration
took control of the port and province. When
a shipment of British military equipment for Armenia arrived thereafter, the
Georgians exacted 27 percent of the matJriel
as the price for facilitating rail transport to Armenia.
The economic reliance of Armenia on Georgia continued into the Soviet
period, and efforts of Armenian Communist leaders to circumvent Georgia and
cut the transportation time between Armenia and Russia by building a branch
railway from Erevan to Akstafa were sufficient to bring about the downfall of
the promoters of the scheme, who figured among the first victims of Stalin's
henchman in the Caucasus, Lavrentii Beria. All
these factors affect the tenor of Armenian-Georgian relations today.
The first president of the new independent Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia,
was regarded with fear by the Armenians of Georgia because of his pronounced
chauvinistic views. There was
resentment over the founding of new Georgian and Turkic Meskhetian villages in
the Armenian-populated regions, rival claims to medieval religious sites, and
the arbitrariness of the Georgian security forces.
Matters became even more complicated when Gamsakhurdia took refuge in
Armenia for a time after being violently evicted from power.
Armenia was unwillingly being drawn into a Georgian civil war. The
return of former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze to Georgia seemed
to ease Armenian-Georgian tensions, and by and large relations between the two
countries remain satisfactory. Georgia
has allowed the passage of supplies and natural gas to Armenia, although the
Armenians have complained that much of the goods are plundered before entering
Armenian territory. Once again,
there are projects on the table to allow the Armenians to develop port
facilities at Batumi or Poti, but no significant progress has been made.
On the contrary, Armenians assert that history is repeating itself, as
recently-adopted Georgian regulations require that all foreign goods in
transit from the sea must pass through Tbilisi, where as a common practice
additional levies are imposed, even though customs duties have been paid
already at the port of entry. Georgia
itself is highly apprehensive about the Karabagh crisis and is less than
enthusiastic about the Armenian military and diplomatic initiatives, for their
success in Karabagh would establish an unmistakable precedent regarding
the Ossetian, Abkhazian, and perhaps even Ajarian regions in Georgia.
On the other hand, non-resolution of the Karabagh conflict has both
political and economic benefits for Georgia, which is courted all the more by
external powers and is ensured that the oil pipeline will pass over its
territory rather than via Armenia. With
all these issues to complicate Armenian-Georgian relations, the Armenians
clearly understand that Georgia
is a critical avenue to the outside world.
Even though the Armenians of Abkhazia suffered greatly at the hands of
the Georgian militia, the Armenian government is working hard not to alienate
the Georgians and has moved to quiet Armenian protests in Akhalkalak/Javakhk.
President Robert Kocharian has acted with intent to establish a strong working
relationship with Shevardnadze and to find a way to prevent differences from
reaching the boiling point. He has called upon the Armenian citizens of Georgia to
support Shevardnadze, and the apparent growing rapport may help to improve the
socio-economic and administrative outlook in Javakhk. But for the moment, at least, the feasibility of forming a
south-north bloc, extending from Iran over Armenia to Georgia and perhaps all
the way to Russia, does not seem attainable. ARMENIA
AND IRAN Iran
is regarded by many Armenians as their most supportive and friendly neighbor.
This may seem ironic in view of the accentuated religious character of
the Iranian Islamic Republic and the ancient historic adversarial relationship
between successive Persian empires and Armenian kingdoms.
To this day the Armenian Church commemorates the martyrdom of Vardan
Mamikonian and the flower of the Armenian nobility in 451 A.D., as they
defended faith and nation against Persian attempts to re-impose Zoroastrianism
in Armenia. The memory of ancient
rivalries, however, has been tempered by awareness that the Armenians and
Iranians are kindred peoples, that they share an Indo-European heritage, and
that historically many aspects of their language, culture, and social systems
have been closely related. It is
true that Iran was Islamicized and partly Turkified, but the underlying Irano-Armenian
bond has been demonstrated by the tolerance and even benevolence with which
Iranian rulers have treated their Armenian minority for nearly four hundred
years, since the time of Shah Abbas.
Armenians were allowed to live, by and large, according to their own
ecclesiastic laws and customs, and the Armenian princes, or meliks,
of Karabagh were confirmed in office by the royal edicts of the Safavid
shahs. There was great turmoil and insecurity under the subsequent
Turkic Qajar dynasty, causing many Armenians to welcome the Russian armies and
the annexation of the Persian khanates north of the Araxes River between 1806
and 1828. In the twentieth
century, thousands of Armenians continued to live in relative comfort and
prosperity in such places as Tabriz, Karadagh, Salmast, Qazvin, Tehran,
Isfahan and then Avaz, Abadan, and
other oil-producing centers (even though nearly half of the community has
emigrated since the Islamic Revolution). During World War I, Armenian refugees
found shelter in Iran, and in the
period of the first Armenian republic, Prince Hovsep Argutinskii-Dolgorukii
was received with high honors as the Armenian plenipotentiary to the royal
court in Tehran. During
the decades of Soviet rule, electric barbed-wire fences separated Armenia from
Iran, and relations between the Armenian communities of Iran and Soviet
Armenia were difficult and strained. The reemergence of an Armenian republic in 1991-92 brought
about immediate manifestations of renewed friendship. Armenian Foreign Minister Raffi K. Hovannisian was received
in Tehran by President Hashemi Rafsanjani and Foreign Minister Ali Akbar
Velayati, laying the groundwork for an official visit by President
Ter-Petrosian in May 1992. In
the first months after the restoration of Armenian independence, Iran reacted
favorably, while also acknowledging its religious-cultural bonds with
Azerbaijan. Tehran’s initiative in offering to serve as a mediator in the
Karabagh conflict may have been intended in part to counter Turkish influence
in the Caucasus and to win greater respect for the Islamic Republic from the
world community. The Iranian
leaders were also understandably concerned that the proliferation of the
hostilities could arouse the ten to fifteen million Iranian Azerbaijanis or,
as referred to by Baku, the
people of "South Azerbaijan." Thus, Iran provided Armenia low-key moral and economic
assistance in breaking out of its physical isolation by helping to construct a
bridge over the Araxes River at Meghri for transportation over Zangezur
to and from Erevan. By
the summer of 1993 and especially after the 1994 cease-fire in Karabagh,
however, Iran's attitude had noticeably cooled.
The Armenian victory at Shushi in May of 1992 and the vivid
descriptions of the bloodshed at Khojaly, the Azerbaijani stronghold that had
kept the Karabagh airport under firm Azerbaijani control, created a backlash
in Iran, especially as the victims were co-religionist Shi'a.
The Armenian offensive in the Kelbajar district in April 1993 elicited
a sharp rebuke from the Tehran government, which made specific reference to
Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, a position it officially continues to
maintain. Significantly,
Azerbaijani President Elchibey appealed both to Turkey and to Iran for
intervention. What is more,
Ter-Petrosian, by dismissing his foreign minister for alleged anti-Turkish
statements and by directing Armenia's political and economic orientation
sharply toward the West through Turkey, raised suspicions among the Iranian
leadership. The failure of
Ter-Petrosian's Turkish initiative and the election of Robert Kocharian have
reinforced the importance attributed to Iran, which continues to respond
favorably while trying to maintain a balance between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Both
Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders have given cause for displeasure to the
Islamic Republic. Elchibey’s pronounced pro-Turkish orientation and
manipulation of the issue of “South Azerbaijan” raised fears about
attempts to dismantle Iran, whereas Aliyev’s much more astute “covering-all-bases”
policy has been received with some skepticism, even though relations are
normal on the surface and trade is brisk.
The same ambivalence has marked Iran’s recent relations with Armenia,
as Tehran views with wariness Armenia’s tilt to the West and some unguarded
remarks by the current Armenian foreign minister during an exploratory visit
to Israel. Still,
Armenian and Iranian geopolitical and strategic interests draw them together
in the face of active Turkish initiatives to lead the Turkic world extending
from Istanbul to Central Asia, the heightened cooperation between Turkey and
Israel, and the Western-sponsored proposals for an exchange of Armenian and
Azerbaijani territories. The arrival of a new Iranian ambassador, Mohammed Farhad
Koleini, in Erevan this year, after the Iranian embassy had operated for
nearly two years without a person of that rank, may be taken as an encouraging
development. THE
RUSSIAN CONNECTION
For
Armenia, the Russian connection constitutes an enigma. Traditionally the most
pro-Russian of the Caucasian peoples, the Armenians felt let down and even
betrayed by Mikhail Gorbachev in the waning years of the Soviet Union.
Armenian anger for a time even passed beyond the person of Gorbachev to
Russia and Russians at large. This
was exacerbated by evidence in 1991 that the Interior Ministry’s security
forces, the OMON, were actively supporting the Azerbaijani side with
rapid-fire arms and armored vehicles in assaults on Getashen (Chaikend) and
the nearby Armenian villages of the Shahumian district.
In Armenian minds there was no doubt that Gorbachev was punishing the
Armenians for their declaration of intent eventually to separate
from the Soviet Union and rewarding the Azerbaijanis for the loyalty to
Moscow of Ayaz Mutalibov’s entrenched Communist regime.
The Russian equation shifted after
the collapse of the Soviet Union. Boris
Yeltsin was on cordial personal terms with President Ter-Petrosian and may
have tilted toward Armenia as a way of countering Turkish influence in the
Caucasus and of expressing dissatisfaction with now-independent Azerbaijan’s
initial refusal to join the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
The Armenian military victory in Karabagh in 1992 and the Kelbajar
offensive in 1993 could not have been conducted without arms and equipment
from external sources. Although
for a time after the dissolution of the Soviet Union it seemed that Russian
influence in the Caucasus would be greatly diminished, the crises in Karabagh
and Abkhazia and the menacing Turkish military maneuvers along the Armenian
frontier provided the opportunity for Moscow to re-enter the region as a
mediator. Russia was the primary broker in the Armenian-Azerbaijani
cease-fire in 1994, and the subsequent bilateral Treaty of Friendship,
Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance in 1997 authorized Russia to maintain
military bases in Armenia and to guard the border with Turkey.
The period of anti-Russian sentiment in Armenia has passed and instead
there is general approval of the existing friendship and cooperation.
This is all the more the case in view of the continuing blockade and
vulnerability of Armenia. At the
same time, however, Heydar Aliyev’s multifaceted foreign policy has done
much to mollify Russia, which has strong economic, political, and military
interests in the eastern Caucasus. Moreover,
the Armenian-Russian agreements have not yet been matched by an equal
political partnership. In the
administrations of both President Levon Ter-Petrosian and President Robert
Kocharian, there have been close working relations between defense ministers
Vazgen Sargsian and Pavel Grachev, and these have continued under Sargsian’s
successor, Serzh Sargsian, and Igor Sergeyev.
Numerous bilateral personal meetings take place between Armenian and
Russian leaders, such as those between Kocharian and Russia’s new president,
Vladimir Putin, but some analysts assert that it is not clear where personal
friendship ends and state diplomacy begins. Moreover, one might question how
long Armenia can maintain the balance in its asymmetric dualism of
strategic-military bonds with Russia and economic reliance on the West.
Russia’s inconsistent attitude
toward the peoples of the Caucasus shapes a part of Armenian historical
memory. Many Armenians welcomed
the expansion of Russia to the Caucasus in the nineteenth century as a means
of transferring from the rule of Islamic states to that of a major Christian
power. Yet the Armenians, like
all other indigenous populations of the region, were not exempt from the
sporadic Russification policies of the Romanov emperors.
For varying periods of time, Armenian schools were closed, the
properties of the Armenian Apostolic Church were confiscated, and the tensions
between differing racial and religious groups were exploited in the strategy
of divide and rule, as was the case in the Armeno-Tatar conflict of 1905-07.
It must also be remembered,
however, that despite these difficulties the Armenians increased more rapidly
than any other element in Transcaucasia or the South Caucasus during the
nineteenth century, in part because of natural growth and in part because of
the continued influx of Armenians from the Ottoman Empire and Iran.
Although Muslims still formed a plurality in the region, they came to
be outnumbered by Christian elements combined.
The demographic changes were accompanied by major economic shifts, as
many Armenian villages subject to Muslim landed notables (beks
and aghas) were able to gain freedom
and Armenian professionals, merchants, and industrialists strengthened their
positions throughout the cities of the Caucasus.
During World War I (1914-18), the
Armenians proved gullible in believing that Russia would emancipate Western
Armenia as a part of a restored national homeland.
They served in large numbers in the Russian armies and organized
volunteer battalions to help liberate the erkir
(homeland). Once Tsar Nicholas
had achieved his military objectives in 1916,
however, he again turned a cold shoulder to the Armenians, as his
government had already entered into a secret agreement with Great Britain and
France on the partition of the Ottoman Empire, according to which the eastern
provinces were to be annexed to Russia but not as an Armenian national home.
What was more, by that time the Ottoman Armenian provinces or Western
Armenia had been denuded by warfare and genocide.
New hope was engendered by the
first Russian revolution in March 1917 and the liberal policies of the
Provisional Government, which allowed thousands of Western Armenian refugees
to return to their home in territories occupied by the Russian armies.
But spirits were soon dampened by the Bolshevik revolution in November
and the resultant Russian Civil War, which isolated Armenia and allowed the
Turkish armies to recapture Western Armenia and invade Eastern (Russian)
Armenia.
The small Armenian republic
created as an act of desperation in May 1918 became the fulcrum of hope for a
reconstituted, united Armenian state when the German and Ottoman empires were
defeated by the Allied Powers a few months later.
But the victory of the Red Army in the Russian Civil War and the
emergence of the Turkish Nationalist movement under Mustafa Kemal sealed the
fate of that small state. In relinquishing power to Soviet Armenia in December
1920, the government of independent Armenia received from Soviet Russia a
pledge that it would force the Turkish armies to withdraw from the occupied
portions of the Republic. Once
again, however, Armenian interests were sacrificed for broader ideological and
strategic considerations, and in the Treaty of Moscow in March 1921, Soviet
Russia recognized Turkey’s expansion up to the Arpachai/Akhurian River,
Armenia’s loss of Kars, Ardahan, and Surmalu (with Mt. Ararat), and the
award of Sharur-Nakhichevan to Soviet Azerbaijan. Soviet Armenia was required to acquiesce in these terms by
becoming a party to a nearly identical treaty signed at Kars in October of
that year. Such historical
memories make many Armenians believe that Russian support at present may be
both conditional and temporary, always subject to sudden change because of
shifting Russian foreign and domestic policy considerations.
Although the modality of the current Armenian-Russian relationship is
still evolving, history has shown that Russia, with all its vacillation,
remains a vital factor in Armenia’s security and future. THE
ELUSIVE WEST The
Armenians have been regarded as one of the most Western-oriented people of the
East. Armenia's contacts with
Europe date back to the ancient world, and they became particularly intense in
the period of the Crusades. During
the centuries that the Armenian
Plateau was divided between the Ottoman and Persian empires, Armenians were
often the initial disseminators of Western innovations and served as
interpreters and intermediaries in diplomatic and commercial relations between
East and West. Armenians made up
the largest segment of the student bodies of American, French, German, and
other Western-sponsored schools and academies in the Ottoman Empire.
When they failed to achieve civil rights and equality through the
nineteenth-century Ottoman reform programs, the Armenians repeatedly turned to
the West for help. As it
happened, Western diplomatic intercession without military intervention only
aggravated Armenian suffering. To what degree the historical memory of these disappointments
affects Armenia’s foreign relations is not certain, in view of the
continuing powerful draw of the West. During
World War I, the Allied Powers condemned in no uncertain terms the
perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide, and after the war Armenia was sometimes
referred to as "the little ally." Armenia went to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 confident
that it would be compensated for the national suffering and would be treated
more favorably than the neighboring Caucasian republics, one created with
German assistance, and the other, with Turkish armed force. The Allied Powers, the victors over both Germany and Turkey,
had made numerous pronouncements regarding a safe and prosperous future for
the Armenian people, who, in the words of British Prime Minister David Lloyd
George, would never again be subjected to the "blasting tyranny of the
Turk." Despite
such declarations and the Armenian belief that a free, independent, united
state was within reach, such dreams were shattered within two years of the end
of the war. Inter-Allied
rivalries, the American refusal to assume a mandate or protectorate over
Armenia, the Turkish resistance movement headed by Mustafa Kemal Pasha, and
the absence of lucrative raw materials and markets in Armenia to make the
country attractive to international financial and commercial interests were
all contributing factors. While
the Turkish armies rolled over the small Caucasian Armenian state that had
never extended beyond the prewar international boundaries, the League of
Nations and the Allied Powers contented themselves with stirring resolutions
of sympathy. No help came from
the West. If
it seemed to the Armenians at the end of World War I that they held the inside
position because of their sacrifices and fidelity to Western principles, the
same seemed to hold true upon the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Sympathy had been generated and humanitarian support extended because
of the 1988 devastating earthquake, which thrust Armenia into world
consciousness, and there were now experienced advocacy groups in the
dispersion to propagate Armenia’s interests.
Sharp criticism of Azerbaijan’s economic stranglehold on Armenia and
Karabagh sounded from many quarters, and Armenia was repeatedly singled out as
a model of democratic reforms, unlike Georgia, which was in the throes of
civil strife, or Azerbaijan, which remained in a tight Communist grip. The
administration of President George Bush commended Armenia for its moves toward
economic privatization and the legal, democratic procedures adopted on the
road to renewed national sovereignty. The first Armenian foreign minister
seemed to have established a cordial relationship with Secretary of State
James Baker, and Bush received President Ter-Petrosian and Foreign Minister
Hovannisian in the White House in November 1991.
It was significant that only a little more than a month later, on
December 25, Armenia was the only Caucasian state included in Bush's official
recognition of five of the former Soviet republics.
The lead of the United States was followed in short order by scores of
other countries. Again, Armenians
were euphoric in the belief that such action also implied at least diplomatic
support in Armenia's enervating conflict with Azerbaijan. These
hopes were of short duration, however. The
United States has much at stake in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
It is far more desirable that Turkey be the channel of American
interests in these regions than to allow conditions to be created that would
open the door to Iran. The
Turkish connection and the strategy to counter the spread of Iranian influence
were clearly factors in the swift pace of the catch-up experienced by
Azerbaijan. Hence, when Secretary of State Baker visited Erevan in
January 1992, he made sure to include also a stop in Baku. Turkey assisted Azerbaijan in making applications to the
United Nations and other international organizations, which welcomed both
Armenia and Azerbaijan in joint ceremonies in March 1992.
The assumption of power in Tbilisi by Eduard Shevardnadze, a familiar
figure to Bush and Baker, was followed by the extension of similar support to
and acceptance of the Republic of Georgia.
What was perceived as a strong Armenian advantage at the end of 1991
had dissipated within a matter of months. In
the following years, the United States Congress would continue to disapprove
of the Azerbaijani blockade of Armenia and try to pressure Baku by imposing
trade and aid restrictions through Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, but
the White House and Department of State have been adept at circumvention,
interpretation, and the creation of loopholes, such as functioning through
agencies funded by, but not officially part of, the government.
Armenia seems concerned that the same political, strategic, economic,
and military significance assigned to Turkey by the Pentagon and State
Department will be extended to Azerbaijan and that Armenia will become
increasingly isolated. The
reprimand by the State Department and the United Nations Security Council over
the military operations in the Kelbajar district, together with the subsequent
resolutions of the OSCE, have only served to deepen these apprehensions.
The interrelationship of economics and politics is well understood by
the Armenians, who see massive Western investment in the Azerbaijani petroleum
industry as a significant factor that will militate against Armenia’s
political interests. There are
numerous examples to draw upon. Each
time a resolution commemorating the Armenian Genocide has been considered by
the United States Congress, the Turkish government has only had to issue
threats relating to the NATO alliance and to trade and American-placed
contracts to bring out the full lobbying force of major corporations and the
executive branch of government to have the resolution defeated through
procedural motions. Armenia has relatively little to attract Western
investment capital at present, and the flow of those resources to Azerbaijan
can only augur ill in any long-term conflict.
When former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visited Baku on
behalf of a petroleum consortium, for example, she went out of her way to
emphasize the primacy of territorial integrity over minority rights or
self-determination. The
softening of the U.S.-Armenia relationship was influenced by the controversial
Armenian presidential election in 1996, as many observers believed the
election to have been stolen. Such
an impression allowed the United States and other foreign governments to exert
greater pressure on Ter-Petrosian’s second-term administration to make
concessions previously deemed out of the question.
And during the Kocharian administration the parliamentary massacre of
October 27, 1999 again left Armenia in a weakened position.
Armenia’s Russian connection, moreover, has deterred the Erevan
government from entering into the same level of Partnership for Peace programs
with NATO and its agencies as have other former Soviet republics.
Contrary to Armenia’s interests, the United States asserts its
influence in favor of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline not only to secure substantial
quantities of petroleum but also as a means of controlling the
communication-transportation routes to the near exclusion of regional powers
currently regarded as unfriendly. In
the present plan for the pipeline, Armenia remains the odd man out. President
Robert Kocharian’s visit to the United States in June 2000, while given
broad coverage in the Armenian press and occasioning optimistic releases from
the office of the president and the foreign ministry, went virtually unnoticed
in the American media. The up-side in all of this is that the United States, as an
exception, has provided humanitarian and technical assistance, not only to the
Armenian republic but also to Mountainous Karabagh, which some analysts
interpret as a form of loose or unofficial de facto recognition.
There is also concern about the
possible erosion of French and general European support.
Previously, Armenian activists in France were able to use their
contacts with socialist parties to get the European Parliament in Strasbourg
to adopt a resolution calling on Turkey to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide
and to take other commensurate actions before being admitted to the European
Community. But the shifts in political power in France and the
substantial increase in French trade with Turkey have not been without
repercussions. Although
Presidents FranHois
Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac received President Ter-Petrosian cordially and
French humanitarian aid continues to reach Armenia and although Kocharian has
been able to strike a good rapport with Chirac, the French leader yielded to
Turkish pressure and failed to support legislation recognizing the reality of
the Armenian Genocide. Passage of
the resolution by the Chamber of Deputies in 1999 created a sufficient wrinkle
in Franco-Turkish relations to prompt the Senate to defer consideration of the
bill. And albeit an academic
exchange between Armenian and Turkish professional persons took place in the
Senate chamber in June 2000 under the auspices of its presiding officer, that
official curiously chose to absent himself from the deliberations.
Despite this situation, the resolution may still be revived.
Moreover, as a measure of encouragement to both Armenia and Azerbaijan,
in June of 2000 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe endorsed
the full membership of the two republics, with the recommendation to be put
before the CE’s Council of Ministers when that body meets in the fall. THE
DIASPORA
Finally,
there is the question of the relationship between Armenia and the Armenian
Diaspora. These communities reached an extraordinary pitch of activity in
response to the 1988 earthquake. Yet the
organizational infrastructure of the Diaspora proved insufficient to
retain most of the many thousands who momentarily returned to the fold after
years of alienation or assimilation. Nonetheless,
the Karabagh demonstrations, the declaration of Armenian independence, and
Armenia’s admission to the United Nations and the raising of its tricolor
flag on the UN Plaza were deeply emotional moments for the Armenians in
dispersion. Thus far, the Armenian government has been able to utilize only a
small fraction of the potential of the Diaspora. The anticipated groundswell
of support has been lacking, in part because of the advanced stage of
assimilation of significant segments of certain communities and in part
because of the failure of the Armenian government to assign representatives
abroad who can interact adequately with the individual communities and who
know their history, speak their language, understand their concerns, and draw
them to united action. The
Armenian Diaspora has been successful in gaining critical humanitarian
assistance for Armenia and, to a lesser degree, for Karabagh, but it has not
been so diligent in efforts to win strong political and diplomatic support.
The Armenian lobbies were not very effective, for example, in drawing
obvious parallels between Sarajevo and Stepanakert during the months that the
capital of Mountainous Karabagh was under constant bombardment by Azerbaijani
artillery and missiles and when civilian casualties were daily occurrences.
On the other hand, the Armenian defense imperatives of taking control
of the regional airport at Khojaly and the Kelbajar salient have been
portrayed in the world media as "ethnic cleansing," with Turkish and
Azerbaijani sources equating Armenia to Serbia.
Under these circumstances, an obvious role for the Diaspora would be to
persuade the governments and legislatures of host countries that security and
self-determination have at least the same priority as the principle of
territorial integrity. The
so-called Dro Affair and President Ter-Petrosian’s decision to expel Hrayr
Maroukhian, the preeminent figure of the Dashnaktsutiun, and to suppress the
party in 1992 created new, deep rifts in the diasporan communities, which were
just beginning to overcome decades of fragmentation over their differing
positions toward Soviet Armenia, the Armenian Church, and related issues.
The challenge remains for the Armenian government and leaders of the
Diaspora to reach a coordinated modus
operandi. The historical
memory of past distrust, rivalry, and even hostility is a major barrier that
has to be surmounted if Armenia hopes to establish the type of teamwork that
is so much envied in the case of the
Jewish Diaspora and the state of Israel, with its all-embracing “law of
return.” Some
hope was offered by the initiative of the government under the premiership of
Vazgen Sargsian, who with Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian took the lead in
organizing a worldwide diasporan conference in Erevan in September of 1999.
Although the conference agenda was highly regulated and arranged in
such a way that most of it was given over to statements from government
officials and representatives of the various communities, there was
nonetheless a sense of elation and optimism as the diverse constituents of
virtually the entire Armenian world sat and conferred together.
Yet, if the intent of the conference was to bridge the gap between
motherland and Diaspora, it was successful only to a limited degree. Much
lip-service was given to the image of the
two wings of the Armenian nation, but in reality the mutual skepticism and
wariness remains. The assurances
of Prime Minister Sargsian that his administration would combat corruption and
meet the concerns of the Diaspora seem to have been lost in his spilled blood
only weeks later. Since then,
there has been little real follow-up by the Kocharian administration, and some
observers believe that talk of teamwork between homeland and dispersion is
largely rhetorical. Still,
President Robert Kocharian remains personally popular in the Armenian Diaspora
and can play a key role in putting the locomotive back on track. CONCLUSION From
this cursory survey of the impact of historical memory on foreign relations,
the obvious conclusion may be drawn that history is at work at many levels of
popular and official behavior. The
attempts of the Armenian government to turn a new page and to seek the
normalization of relations with traditionally adversarial neighbors have been
generally frustrated by the reactions of those neighbors and sometimes by the
mode of operation of the Armenians themselves.
President Ter-Petrosian's bold Turkish initiative did not bear the
desired results and only reinforced the deeply-ingrained stereotypes and
distrust. President Kocharian has
accommodated a broad cross-section of Diaspora and Armenia-based
constituencies by declaring that recognition of the Armenian Genocide is an
integral part of his foreign policy. As
yet, however, there does not seem to be a substantial change in approach or
result. Armenia remains
landlocked and confined. Georgia
affords the most practical avenue to the outside world, yet the strife in that
country and unrest in Ossetia, Chechnia, and Abkhazia have only compounded
Armenia’s communications and transportation problems. Moreover, Georgia has
apparently fallen out of the speculated north-south non-Turkish buffer and has
moved increasingly toward the east-west configuration and orientation.
Still, there is a certain community of interest between Armenians and
Georgians, and it remains to be seen if the Kocharian and Shevardnadze
administrations can build on that base. There
is also a commonality of Iranian-Armenian interests, and Iranian benevolence
is essential for Armenia’s well being, even though access to the outside
world via Iran will remain limited so long as relations remain strained
between the Islamic Republic and the United States of America.
In
the end, the historical record
may demonstrate that there is no more viable alternative than a permanent,
close association with Russia, even in the absence of a common boundary, and
that Russia will inevitably emerge as a major regional and even world power.
The looming question is whether such a Russia will view Armenia as an equal
strategic partner and allow Armenia to conduct an independent policy
best suited to ensure
its own
little space in the turbulent meeting
grounds of the
Oriental and Occidental, Slavic and Middle Eastern, and Christian and Islamic worlds.
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