Where is Armenia drifting together with Turkey?

When reports appeared about the completion of negotiations in Moscow between the special representatives of Turkey and Armenia - former Turkish Ambassador to the United States Serdar Kılıç and Deputy Speaker of the Parliament of the Republic Ruben Rubinyan - on the normalisation of relations between the two countries, experts immediately announced the appearance of another acute political plot, the promotion of which could seriously affect the further course of events in the region. Its main meaning consists of the following.

The fact is that after the second Karabakh war, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan addressed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan four times with a proposal to start negotiations "without preliminaries" on the normalisation of relations between the two countries.

Turkey responded to this with a so-called "package proposal": normalisation should be carried out by Armenia simultaneously with Turkey and Azerbaijan, which at the same time set new conditions for unblocking communication corridors in Transcaucasia by Armenia. In particular, it was about the so-called "Zangezur corridor".

Yerevan verbally agreed that communications between the countries will be open. Therefore, the Moscow Armenia-Turkey negotiation cycle meant that Pashinyan managed to separate two platforms: Armenian-Turkish and Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations.

The next important nuance. World practice shows that it is possible to carry out an action for restoring diplomatic relations in another way. This is done through the exchange of notes, telegrams at the highest state level or between foreign ministers through the signing of an agreement.

Other related issues or problems may be resolved or discussed with the participation of official representatives in a working manner. Hence the conclusion follows: the Turkish-Armenian one that has begun will have a broader agenda than the one officially announced.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu openly spoke about this. According to him, the parties in Moscow discussed the proposed "Roadmap of measures" aimed at "creating an atmosphere of trust between Turkey and Armenia”. He also said that the Moscow meeting of the special representatives of Turkey and Armenia is not yet negotiations, but a preface to them”.

After the governments of the two countries approve the Roadmap, "negotiations can continue by telephone diplomacy and within the framework of videoconference conversations, or in personal contact already on other platforms."

Thus, another nuance emerges: Ankara and Yerevan decided not to make public the contents of the Roadmap. At the same time, our Turkish sources claim that there is no mention of the Azerbaijani factor in this document.

So, around what is the diplomatic many-moves-ahead play being promoted, if the Armenian side, declaring "negotiations without preconditions", puts out of the equation the question of Turkey's recognition of the Armenian Genocide in the early 20th century in the Ottoman Empire and does not make any territorial claims?

Otherwise, negotiations would hardly be possible in general. Now many experts are puzzled over this, and the Armenian opposition, especially the Dashnakcutyun party, is organising protest actions of a probing nature. Deputy Speaker of the parliament from the opposition bloc "Armenia" (it has the second largest faction in the legislature), representative of the Supreme Body of the Dashnakcutyun party Ishkhan Saghatelyan even announced the organisation of the "resistance movement".

But it's precisely this that somewhat confuses the situation, since there is an opinion in part of the Armenian society that "Armenia's rapprochement with Turkey is carried out under the patronage of the United States, and in particular, the strong Armenian diaspora”. Perhaps it is not accidentally that the Special Representative of Armenia, the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly Rubinyan decided to engage in a historical controversy with the Dashnaks.

"I have a question," he said. “How can there be a faction consisting, among other things, of representatives of the Dashnakcutyun party, whose leaders signed a document on cooperation with the Young Turks, and in 1918 visited Constantinople, where they declared that Armenia owes its independence to Turkey, the party whose representative Simon Vratsian in 1921 asked for military assistance to Kemalist Turkey?".

The historical truth is this. On June 4, 1918, by concluding a treaty of peace and friendship between the Ottoman imperial government and the Dashnak-led Republic of Armenia, Turkey was the first to recognise its independence within the territory controlled by the government of the Republic of Armenia by that time.

And on March 18, 1921, that is, shortly before Bolshevisation, having already been removed from power, the Prime Minister of the First Republic of Armenia, Simon Vratsian, actually sent a telegram to the leadership of the Grand Assembly of Turkey asking for help.

"We ask you to inform us whether the leadership of the Great Assembly considers it possible to provide us with military assistance," the document says. “If so, in what size and type and in what time frame?".

On November 30, 1920, the Armenian newspaper "Araj" wrote: "Armenia has only one way of salvation – to find a common language with its Turk neighbour. If the Armenian people want to live and guarantee their state and physical existence, they should have a pro-Turkish orientation, and not a pro-Russian one."

But the fact is that the Dashnaks throughout their party history have never been politically homogeneous. They had an "Eastern" and "Western Bureau", which adhered to different foreign policy orientations. The same Vratsian, despite his ties with the Moscow Bolsheviks, was suspected of being pro-Western.

Therefore, it can be assumed that the historical controversy that has broken out between different political forces in Armenia can potentially be projected both on the building of Pashinyan's relations with the Armenian diaspora and on relations with Turkey. It is no coincidence that the special representative of Turkey at the talks with Armenia, Ambassador Kilic, is reputed to be an expert on the problems of the Armenian diaspora in the United States.

As for Russia, it has never tried to be a substitute for Yerevan, while Ankara was ready to play for Baku, pushing it into the shadows. Such assumptions do not appear from scratch.

Experts of the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung, analysing the current situation in the region, believe that "the Kremlin welcomes the normalisation of relations between Armenia and Turkey, and its position is not so far from the position of the United States or other Western players”. On the other hand, these are signs that Armenia is being introduced into the "big game" in a region in which historically it has felt generally confident and comfortable.

In the meantime, the chain of agreements concluded on November 10, 2020 is gradually beginning to blur. The future will already manifest itself in the steps of Ankara and Yerevan, and an acute question arises: does Turkey remain the same as it is now, because everyone has their own plans and interests within the framework of the Turkish-Armenian negotiation process that has begun.