US Armenians hope for failure of Ankara-Yerevan deal

Armenian-Americans and their backers in Congress are hoping for the collapse of a normalization deal between Turkey and Armenia so they can continue to lobby for U.S. recognition of what they term the "Armenian genocide," diplomats and analysts said.

The Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers signed historic protocols on Oct. 10 that called for the creation of normal diplomatic relations between the two neighbors and the reopening of their shared land border. Their parliaments must first ratify the deal before the provisions go into effect.

Before reopening the land border, which has remained closed for 16 years, Turkey wants to see some progress toward the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Ankara's close ally.

Nagorno-Karabakh, a mainly Armenian-populated enclave inside Azerbaijan’s borders, has been under Armenian occupation since a war in the early 1990s.

Reopening border key matter

Yerevan, however, seeks to keep the normalization deal with Turkey and the Nagorno-Karabakh issue as completely separate processes, urging Turkey to reopen the border as soon as possible. Diaspora Armenians, meanwhile, also staunchly oppose any concessions on Karabakh.

But without progress on the Karabakh matter, it will be extremely difficult for Ankara to move to reopen the border. "If there's no progress on Karabakh, Turkey simply can't reopen the border with Armenia, which will effectively mean that the reconciliation process will have failed," one Washington-based analyst said. "If this happens, it will be important to see which side will be blamed for the derailed process. The Armenians will try to persuade the world that it's the Turks that stopped the process."

In that case, U.S. Armenians and their backers in Congress will seek to punish Turkey in Congress, the analyst said.

Armenian efforts in Congress

A resolution urging the United States to recognize the World War I-era killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide has been pending in the House of Representatives, Congress' lower chamber, since February.

Democratic Senator Robert Menendez and Republican Senator John Ensign introduced a similar resolution in the Senate, Congress' upper chamber, last month.

"Pro-Armenian lawmakers in both sides of Congress will step up efforts for genocide recognition in the event of the collapse of the Ankara-Yerevan deal," said the analyst.

"Any formal U.S. genocide recognition would kill the normalization process," one Turkish diplomat said.

But U.S. Armenians and their congressional backers are keen on genocide recognition, not the creation of normalized Ankara-Yerevan ties," said the analyst.

"So there's a major trap jeopardizing the reconciliation process, and that trap can be prevented only if there's progress on the solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute," the analyst said.