Turkey: “The Other”

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the existing impasse in the Armenian-Turkish relations. It argues that the issues placed on the bilateral agenda in the forms of preconditions do not adequately reflect the deep underlying threat perceptions rooted in a collective narrative. This explains the unexpected setbacks despite the favorable regional and structural developments. The reality of closed borders perpetuates the perception in Armenia of joint Turkish-Azerbaijani concerted policy to isolate Armenia and reinforces historical constructs and templates. The damage caused by the blockade is both material and psychological. The ambiguity in Turkish intensions and Turkish elite’s constant jockeying with various preconditions corrupts the existing inclination on the part of Armenia to enter a dialogue despite Turkish failure to recognize the genocide. While Dashnaktsutyun remains the only major Armenian party that puts forth the genocide issue as a precondition for normalizing relations with Turkey, Turkish establishment at large, even as pragmatic as the current one represented by Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), does not seem to be able to overcome its syndrome of suspicion of Armenians and to rise above ethnic affinities with Azerbaijan. Armenia’s foreign policy toward Turkey, restraints posed by the diaspora factor notwithstanding, has displayed a greater degree of maneuverability than Ankara’s.