Armenia braces for more protests

Armenia braces for more protests


Thursday, September 17, 2009

VERCİHAN ZİFLİOĞLU

YEREVAN - Hürriyet Daily News

Armenia is bracing for more protests on Friday against the normalization of relations between Ankara and Yerevan, as President Serge Sarkisian begins talks with Armenian party leaders on a landmark deal to establish diplomatic ties with Turkey.

Thousands of Armenians are expected to stage a demonstration in Yerevan on Friday to protest the recent diplomatic thaw with Turkey. The former Soviet republic’s first president, Levon Ter-Petrossian, will lead the rally, organizers told Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

“Sarkisian, who came to power without the support of the Armenian people, is trying to win the international community’s approval by bargaining with Turkey. If Ter-Petrossian were in power, there would be no such deal on the table,” said Levon Zurabian, a spokesperson for Ter-Petrossian.

Turkey and Armenia agreed last month on steps to establish full diplomatic ties for the first time between the neighbors. The countries will hold six weeks of domestic debate over the protocols, drawn up under Swiss mediation, before they are submitted for ratification by their parliaments.

A first sign of rapprochement came in September last year, when Turkish President Abdullah Gül went to the Armenian capital to visit Sarkisian and watch a World Cup soccer qualifying match between the two countries. Sarkisian is expected to visit Turkey for a return match on Oct. 14. U.S. President Barack Obama visited Ankara in April and said he hoped efforts to normalize relations between the two would “bear fruit.”

Armenia claims up to 1.5 million Armenians were systematically killed in 1915 under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey denies this, saying that any deaths were the result of civil strife that erupted when Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia.

Diaspora deeply anxious

Turkey is taking advantage of the weak political position of Sarkisian’s government, Zurabian said. “The recent steps toward normalization will harm bilateral relations between both nations,” he said. “The protocols are nothing but fake and they [Ankara and Yerevan] want us to believe there are no preconditions.”

Commenting on the reaction of the Armenian diaspora to the normalization talks, Zurabian said many Armenians abroad are deeply anxious about the protocols and disappointed with what he termed “the wrong steps taken by the Sarkisian government.” The Armenian parliament will ratify the protocols, predicted Zurabian, but the Turkish parliament won’t. “Besides, Ankara will not open the border with Armenia unless Yerevan takes steps toward solving the Nagorno-Karabakh issue,” he said.

Nagorno-Karabakh is an enclave in Azerbaijan that has been occupied by Armenian forces since the end of a six-year conflict in 1994, which left about 30,000 people dead and displaced 1 million. The region’s unilateral independence is not recognized by the international community.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in solidarity with ally Azerbaijan over Yerevan's backing of ethnic Armenian separatists in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Karabakh is an internal issue of the self-proclaimed republic, said Zurabian. “Let’s leave Karabakh to itself, and it will decide its own future.”