Let us first start with the obvious reason. Simply put, had Turkey failed to jointly declare with Armenia on April 22 -- just 48 hours before the White House declaration -- that there was a "road map for the normalization of relations," the Obama White House could very well have decided to refer to "the events of 1915" as "genocide." The fact that US President Barack Obama did not use this term clearly illustrates how much he values the process of normalization between Armenia and Turkey. It is fair to say that April 2009 will be remembered as one the most intense months in the history of Turkish-American diplomatic relations. First came the unexpected decision of President Obama to visit Turkey in early April. This visit shocked the Armenian lobby in America, which was counting on Obama to honor his campaign promise to recognize the Armenian genocide later that month. On the Turkish side, there was joy and jubilation. The visit came to be seen as a much-deserved recognition of Turkey's geostrategic importance and as an attempt within the early days of the new American administration to put things back on track with Ankara.
On the negative side in Turkey, the visit created a dangerous sense of relief and complacency as far as the Armenian question was concerned. At a time when Turkish diplomacy was extremely worried about what would happen on April 24, Obama's unexpected visit convinced many that their fears about the new American administration's Armenian policy were exaggerated. Surely, the argument went, Obama would not have decided to visit a country just two weeks before April 24 if he really intended to blame it for having committed genocide.
This sense of relief was dangerous because an important reason Obama decided to visit Turkey was to speed up the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process. Secret diplomatic talks between Ankara and Yerevan have been under way in Switzerland since late 2007. President Obama wanted Turkey and Armenia to publicly declare their new agreement, ideally during his visit. This would have been the ideal way of saving face to avoid a diplomatic crisis with Turkey on April 24. Yet, Turkey failed to deliver.
Things got complicated because of Azerbaijan. Baku felt betrayed by Turkey for its decision to normalize relations with its nemesis. The Azeri government wanted Ankara to continue to index its relations with Armenia by the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
In the meantime, Yerevan also began to drag its feet, partly because the Armenian-American diaspora did not want Turkish-Armenian reconciliation just when they were about to score a huge victory on April 24. They wanted to pressure the Obama administration instead of offering it a face-saving way to backpedal on campaign promises. This is why it took courage, vision and leadership on the part of Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan to issue the joint declaration with Turkey on April 22, just two days before the Armenian genocide remembrance day.
All this illustrates how close Turkey and America came to the brink of a diplomatic earthquake on April 24. As in April 2007, it was an eleventh hour intervention that saved the day. Of course, the bitter irony is that no one is happy about the outcome. The Armenian diaspora is angry because it did not get the genocide recognition it was promised during the Obama campaign. The Turks are angry because the language in the letter leaves no room for ambiguity about what happened in 1915. In fact, because the White House decided not to use the term genocide, it had to compensate with a very strong and emotional text, waxing poetic about the tragedy. Yet, despite all complaints, at the end of the day, Turkish-American relations once again dodged a bullet.
The real tragedy, if you ask me, is that the same old story will repeat itself next year. After all, even if there is a genuine reconciliation process, how likely is it that Turkish and Armenian historians will agree on what exactly happened in 1915?
