How Armenia "wooed" Turkiye: does Pashinyan have a chance today?

When we say that Azerbaijan rendered a great service to Armenia by defeating it in the war, the neighboring country is offended. But it really is. Azerbaijan has actually opened up great prospects for Armenia and the Armenian people by ridding its neighbors of the status of an occupier. Although only a couple of countries in the world officially recognized Armenia as an aggressor, this fact was universally recognized at the unofficial level. The country was not sanctioned, it was not condemned from international platforms, it was not poked in international law, but it was silently ignored. For almost thirty years, Armenia, as a member of the international community, has been invisible and tacitly considered a non-handshaking state. Because, despite the pro-Armenian sympathies bought with the money of the Diaspora, the world knew what was what.

The fact of the occupation of Azerbaijani territories did not require proof. Everything was happening in front of the world community. Yes, they did not want to see Armenian atrocities and Yerevan's disregard for international law. Nevertheless, heads of state practically did not travel to Armenia, with the exception of their guardians, international events were not held there, and Armenian leaders felt like poor relatives at meetings abroad, or rather, they were made to understand who they were.

In short, no one wanted to deal with criminals, even if there was an order not to send him to jail. For high-ranking officials in the United States and Europe, where there was widespread pro-Armenian propaganda, the same Serzh Sargsyan, for example, was always tacitly a non-handshake person. Nikol Pashinyan's coming to power has somewhat changed the approaches to the leadership, but not to the reputation of Armenia itself.

Everything changed after the Second Karabakh War. The visit of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to Turkiye is a vivid example of this.

Official contacts between Armenia and Turkiye began in 2021. Before the war, these relations were conditioned by the liberation of the territories of Azerbaijan, and Yerevan could not circumvent this condition. For many years, he tried to overcome the realities, and once he almost succeeded, but the occupation factor did not allow the parties to move beyond a certain line.

The so-called "football diplomacy" failed precisely for this reason. Ankara has not been able to cross this line. On October 10, 2009, in Zurich, the Foreign Ministers of Turkiye and Armenia signed the documents that went down in history as the "Zurich Protocols." These were protocols on the establishment of diplomatic relations and protocols on the development of bilateral relations. Let's say right away that the documents have not been ratified by the Turkish parliament. Armenia waited nine years and, in the end, was forced to take the same step. Turkiye refused to ratify, as Baku did not welcome all this inappropriate peacemaking. It is not even worth guessing who Ankara will choose between Baku and Yerevan in such a situation.

Serzh Sargsyan really wanted to be called the president who opened the Turkish border. At the same time, he did not want to give up not only the occupation of Azerbaijani territories, but also his claims to Turkish lands. A world with a country that not only calls your territories "western Armenia" and paints your mountain on its coat of arms, but also accuses you of "genocide" would look very strange. Sargsyan delayed abandoning the protocols in the hope that the West would put the squeeze on Ankara. But even the West could not outweigh the word spoken by Azerbaijan.

In April 2010, during the anti-nuclear summit in Washington, Serzh Sargsyan met with then-Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The meeting lasted an hour and a half and went badly, as it turned out later. After the meeting, the parties declined to comment. After it, Sargsyan went to lay a wreath at the grave of Woodrow Wilson, who promised Armenians half of the Caucasus, and stated there that Turkiye, they say, "cannot speak with Armenia and Armenians in the language of preconditions, we simply will not allow it." In turn, Erdogan, speaking on the same day at the opening of the Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University, said that "the decisions of the parliaments of various countries to recognize the "Armenian genocide" are not for the benefit of Armenia." And he stressed that history should be studied and evaluated by historians, not parliaments.

This was the end of the Armenian-Turkish settlement attempts. In 2017, Yerevan defiantly refused Ankara's invitation to participate in the 25th BSEC Summit in Istanbul, sending its deputy foreign minister there instead of the president.

The mask of the "peacemaker" quickly faded from Serzh Sargsyan's face. Despite the fact that the peace process seemed to be continuing between the countries, at one of the meetings with schoolchildren, the Armenian president, answering a question about the "return of western lands and Mount Ararat," said that they, the older generation, had already fulfilled their task by occupying Azerbaijani lands, and "western Armenia" was already theirs. the task, that is, the task of the new generation. In Turkiye, they heard Sargsyan and realized that Armenia is incurable. Official Ankara demanded an apology. Yerevan, of course, did not apologize. And what would be the point of apologies if the Armenian statehood, according to the Declaration of Independence, provided for the "return of Western Armenia", and these claims were enshrined in the Constitution.

Nikol Pashinyan wants to change the situation, and this can only be welcomed. He was the first Armenian politician and leader to declare the inadmissibility of claims to neighboring territories in the basic law. He was the first to openly speak out against the propaganda of the "Armenian genocide" and decided to question this fact. This is a very good start for building Armenian-Turkish relations.

After talks with President Erdogan, Pashinyan met with representatives of the local Armenian Diaspora on June 20. Armenians living in Turkiye are more interested than anyone else in establishing diplomatic relations and opening borders, therefore, according to the Armenian media, Pashinyan was not asked any idiotic questions at the meeting.

Contrary to the claims of the Armenian propaganda, Azerbaijan is not at all against the cooperation of Armenia and Turkiye. After the fact of the occupation of our territories was eliminated, there were much fewer obstacles to this. Let no one think that Baku hears only frivolous statements by Pashinyan. Nothing like that. His positive steps are also heard and appreciated here. Moreover, we understand what kind of opposition the Armenian prime minister has to overcome in his own country. But what can you do - the path to peace cannot be easy, especially for the side that is responsible for so much hostility in the region.

Armenia has done things on its own and must fix everything on its own. No matter how much it hurts.