TURKEY IS HURTING ITSELF DENYING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

“With the adoption of the House Resolution on Thursday, March 4, in the United States House of Representatives’ Foreign Relations Committee regarding the Armenian Genocide, along with the adoption of a motion Thursday in the Swedish Parliament, Turkey’s official denialist positions have been hard hit,” Turkish Hurriyet Daily News reports.
“But the worst casualty of all is the death of the Protocols signed between Armenia and Turkey in order to normalize relations. The adoption of the House Resolution in the U.S. subcommittee was already the last nail in the coffin of the Protocols. Now with the Swedish motion they can be considered as definitely dead. The result means Armenia, Turkey and the remaining Caucasus countries actually all lost,” the daily emphasizes.
“When the Armenian and Turkish foreign ministers showed up in the Swiss city of Zurich last fall, signing the Protocols was extremely important for the parties and sponsor countries. The blueprints were remarkable examples of diplomatic style that didn’t set any preconditions nor spell out any contentious issue specifically. But politicians got involved in them immediately,” the source says.
“The ratification process was hard hit first thanks to remarks by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who, despite his poor insight on foreign affairs, cannot help himself but speak out exactly like at home. He tied up the Protocols’ ratification in Turkish Parliament with finding a solution to the Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. So it became clear that no ratification could take place in the Turkish Parliament before the U.S. voting. That undoubtedly played a role in the Genocide Bill being passed in the Foreign Relations Committee and now in the Swedish Parliament. Before the voting in U.S., Turkish politicians got completely involved in the issue. Delegations armed with excessive self-confidence, sure of their denialist certitudes but basically unfamiliar with the issue, headed to Washington. The meaning of the voting was exaggerated; Turkish public opinion was ill-informed to a degree that today people in Turkey think that &‘the U.S. has approved the Armenian Genocide,’ the daily reads.
”Today, in the eye of the U.S. administration, Turkey gives the image of an unreliable partner that is compelled to increase the dose of its blackmail every time to impress lawmakers. The national outburst coupled with the Swedish vote will probably add to that. Secondly, in a wider perspective, the main aspect of the answer to the hot question of recent times “Is Turkey turning its face to the East, to the Islamic World?” was the Armenian initiative. Since this no longer exists, we are left with the images of the Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir’s visit to Turkey and connections with Hamas and the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Concurrently, the prestige of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who has received praise from every quarter for his various initiatives, has suddenly fallen apart. While opening embassies in far-off capitals, Turkey is calling back its envoys from the capitals of its allies and friends," the daily underlines.
“Thirdly, Turkey, eager to play the mediator for every single conflict around the world, appears to grossly failing in its attempt to settle its domestic problems, i.e. the Armenian, Kurdish and Cyprus conflicts,” the source informs.
“Turkish government is a shrewd, visionless, conservative one that only tries to make advantage of the situation but never compromises. Owing to its geopolitical position, Turkey remains a critical country. Contrary to what Foreign Minister Davutoglu claims, Turkey is still not the one who takes the initiatives and is in control of developments around itself. The Protocols fiasco is a proof of continued passiveness,” the daily concludes.News from Armenia - NEWS.a