The impasse in Cyprus is now blocking Turkey’s negotiations with the European Union, while the stalemate in relations with Armenia has cost Turkey a major downturn in relations with the United States.The irony is that when the Turkish government supported the Annan plan that was supposed to unite Cyprus in 2004, this policy looked like a clear achievement for its policy of “zero problems” with its neighbors. So did the signature of protocols with Armenia in October 2009. Thanks to these two protocols, Turkey and Armenia had agreed -- at least on paper -- to establish relations and open their common border, which had been sealed in 1993 when Ankara showed solidarity with Azerbaijan during the latter’s nasty war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh. The protocols were also going to set up a joint committee of historians to investigate whether mass killings of hundreds of thousands of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 constituted genocide.
Yet the devil was still in the details: The protocols signed required parliamentary ratification in the national parliaments in order to become effective. There were major obstacles from the very start. Soon after the signing ceremony, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made the critical mistake of linking the ratification of the protocols and the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border to Armenian concessions in Nagorno-Karabakh. He made it clear, speech after speech at home and abroad, that no positive steps could be taken before Armenia withdrew from Azerbaijan. The main reason behind his position was related to domestic Turkish politics as well as to the rigid Azerbaijani position regarding Turkish-Armenian relations. Azerbaijan vehemently opposes Turkish-Armenian rapprochement, which it describes as harmful to its interests and gravely damaging to its relations with “fraternal” Turkey. Given the considerable influence of the Azeri lobby in Turkey and the fact that Turkey gets much of its oil and gas from Azerbaijan, this outside pressure further exacerbates domestic difficulties.
But there are also domestic factors behind the ruling AKP’s reluctance vis-a-vis the ratification of the two protocols. The AKP is concerned about the willingness of opposition parties the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) to exploit the issue. Both Deniz Baykal and Devlet Bahçeli are nationalist hard-liners who see the rapprochement with Armenia as “selling out” Turkish national interests. They claim that Armenia maintains territorial ambitions over Turkey and that the process will eventually lead to worldwide recognition of Armenia’s version of history, followed with demands of financial compensation for the “genocide” of 1915.
Of course, the fact that election season is fast approaching further complicated matters by exacerbating the AKP’s populist and nationalist proclivities. The AKP has already spent precious political capital on the Kurdish initiative, which cost Erdoğan a lot of support according to recent opinion polls. The irony is that the Kurdish initiative too, like the Cyprus and Armenia initiatives, reached an impasse after the Constitutional Court decided to close down the pro-Kurdish and pro-Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Democratic Society Party (DTP). At this point, the AKP’s nationalist credentials are under severe scrutiny and the MHP appears to be on the rise. This poses a major dilemma for Erdoğan because the AKP and the MHP often fight for the same political constituency, particularly in the conservative Anatolian heartland.
As the title of this article suggests, today, the AKP looks increasingly like the party that promised a lot but failed to deliver. Is there a way out of “zero progress”? The easy answer is yes. The Erdoğan government can once again be “one step ahead” -- as it was in 2004 during its support for the Annan plan in Cyprus -- by adopting some creative policies. Here are two suggestions. First, withdraw a symbolic amount of Turkish troops from Cyprus. This number could be as low as 1,000. After, all the Turkish Army has more than 35,000 soldiers on the island. Such a move would pressure the EU to open some negotiation chapters that are currently closed and put the Greek Cypriots on the defensive. With Armenia, the AKP could decide to go halfway. It could pass only one of the protocols by establishing diplomatic relations without opening the border. Full normalization would therefore be still contingent on progress in Nagorno-Karabakh. It is time for the AKP to show some vision and courage.
