Yegparian: Soccer Sellout
Sorry FDR, but I’ve got to steal your line, because truly, Black Saturday, October 10, is a day that will live in infamy. I write this article in a mood of utter disgust and deeply suppressed rage. How else would you have me, or the world have us, Armenians, feel, when, as a friend wrote to me, “They just sold out the whole country, and we couldn’t do a thing about it.”
Sure, there was some last minute brinkmanship. The speeches by Armenia’s and Turkey’s representatives were cancelled to avoid stepping on one another’s toes over the Genocide and linkage of the infamous protocols’ implementation to Turkish-defined “progress” on Artzakh negotiations. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earned her keep by arm-twisting the two parties to sign the documents that potentially spell the end of Armenia as an independent state worthy of that name and status.
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Garen,
I have to say I’m surprised by all the gloom and doom I read in this and other Armenian publications. Nothing changed!
Economically: Yes, the border will be opened eventually but if Armenia finds the economic effects harming itself, well, it can just close the border again. Or put high tariffs on Turkish goods.
Genocide recognition: no official body can go against the common consensus of decades’ worth of scholarship; sooner or later even Turkey will recognize it (disclosure: I am Turkish). At first leaders will be afraid to utter the “G” word but instead “express sorrow and regret” or some other silly euphemism. Then a little while later you’ll see people among the intelligentsia take the lead and genocide acceptance will become the norm.
I can understand much scepticism on what I just wrote. How can all this happen in a country that has closed its ears and eyes to the rest of the world for 90 years? The last decade has witnessed great changes in Turkish society, ranging from the general increase in prosperity to the rise of a broad civil society. Turkey is not the Turkey of 20 years ago.
Borders: well, what did you expect? You can press for recognition, for monetary compensation, for many other things, but you cannot change countries borders short of a war, certainly not this border. It was never going to happen; its strange the realization is sinking only now.