No quarrels with Mark’s assessment of the politics of recognizing the Armenian genocide, other than to note that it may well become a non-issue. Not for Armenian-American organizations, but for the Armenian and Turkish governments. Unhatched Caucasian chickens shouldn’t be counted more confidently than any others, but Armenia-Turkey relations have been warming at a dizzying pace, with Turkish President Gül visiting Yerevan recently. As one Armenian analyst observes
Ankara and Yerevan are reportedly close to overcoming another Turkish precondition for normalizing bilateral ties: an end to the decades-long Armenian campaign for international recognition of the World War One-era massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide. The Sargsyan administration seems ready to accept a Turkish proposal to form a commission of Turkish and Armenian historians that would jointly study the mass killings and deportations.
Many in Armenia and especially its worldwide Diaspora oppose such a study, saying that it would call into question the very fact of what many historians consider the first genocide of the 20th century. They also view the Turkish proposal as a ploy designed to scuttle the genocide’s recognition by more foreign nation.
Sargsyan appeared to dismiss such concerns as he addressed hundreds of influential members of the Armenian-American community in New York on September 24. “We must talk about all topics,” he said. “Only those people who have nothing to say and suffer from complexes avoid contacts, conversations.”
The Turkish government, meanwhile, says that
If we manage to make rapid progress in our initiative to solve the problems…then there will be no need for third country parliaments to discuss these issues. We can tell them: “Mind your own business. Armenia and Turkey are getting along well.”
Let’s hope that in 2012 the presidential candidates won’t have to lie to Armenians or Jews.