Armenia-Turkey Relations Under Scrutiny

The Turkish Daily News reports that the United States government has called upon Armenia to recognize the border with Turkey as a first step towards reconciliation between the two countries. Currently the border is also closed and no diplomatic relations officially exist between Yerevan and Ankara.

“Armenia should acknowledge the existing border with Turkey and respond constructively to efforts that Turkey may make,” Dan Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, told a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on recent developments in the Caucasus.Also in the written text of his speech at the panel, Fried said, “Armenia must be ready to… disavow any claim on the territory of modern Turkey.”

Much of the problem lies in continuing disagreement between the two neighboring countries over the mass killing and deportation of ethnic Armenians from the Ottoman Empire. Most historians as well as legislatures of different countries consider the events of 1915-17 the first Genocide of the 20th Century.

[…] Pro-Armenian lawmakers insistently asked Fried why the United States does not officially recognize last century’s Armenian killings in the Ottoman empire as genocide.”We don’t use the term because we do not think that the use of that term would contribute to a reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey, nor would it contribute to Turkey’s examination of the dark spots in its own history,” he replied. […]

In related news, Marie Yovanovitch, nominated as U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, is reported by Today’s Zaman to have refused to call the event Genocide. She did, however, refer to “”mass killings, ethnic cleansing and forced deportation.”