It's not that I doubted his ability to master international affairs, but that I suspected his real talent was an ability to package the world in such a way that would appeal to a well-defined political constituency. He was therefore able to proceed with the projects important to Turkey's future, by rephrasing sometimes unpalatable truths in a way that would leap over the nationalist, conservative and tiers-mondiste prejudices of the political movement he serves. While this in itself is no mean achievement, I am beginning to revise upwards my good opinion of Professor Davutoğlu's talents for nuts-and-bolts diplomacy.If press reports are to be believed, it was his formula which broke the deadlock when Armenia looked unwilling to sign the protocol agreements with Turkey this past weekend. The objection was not to the text but to the prepared statements which were to be read afterward -- documents intended to reiterate the entrenched positions which the protocols themselves were designed to work around. In the heat of the moment, Professor Davutoğlu kept his eye on the ball and suggested that the best way out of the impasse was for both sides to sign and say nothing. No doubt the image of a fuming Hillary Clinton, her limo idling in a nearby hotel car park and a mobile phone parked on each ear, helped concentrate his mind.
Professor Davutoğlu's logic and the reason behind why the Zurich accord is getting such plaudits in the world's press is that it is better to embark on a road of reconciliation than stay put in the trenches of hardened positions. Isolation is the hothouse in which nationalistic excesses thrive and governments struggle to pay off the exponential interest of their predecessors' grave mistakes. It is only by contact between people, the true commerce of ideas, preconceptions and trade, that Armenians and Turks will develop the collective will to resolve their differences.
No commentator I have read believes that this is going to be a downhill ride. Azerbaijan continues to exercise an uncanny leverage over Turkish foreign policy -- buoyed by ethnic affinity and cheap hydrocarbons. Ankara has promised in the past that it cannot proceed with ratifying the actual protocols while Armenia continues to occupy Azerbaijani territory in Nagorno-Karabakh. This issue was behind Turkey sealing the very border with Armenia in 1993 which Ankara is just now trying to wedge open. Baku's pressure on Ankara, however, is as nothing compared to that which the Armenian diaspora exerts over Yerevan. A scattered population united by the memory of 1915, fear that Ankara will be able to deflect the mounting international pressure to recognize these events as proto-genocide.
“Now is not the time to rock the boat when we are trying to contain our own ultra-nationalists,” the pro-Turkey lobby will tell the US House of Representatives and point out the real progress of restoring some sort of sanity to the Transcaucasus. It will look as though the Armenian lobby is demanding that their moral certainty be paid for by the suffering of mainland Armenia by insisting that the border with Turkey remain shut and the economic isolation continue. Aware that they are being maneuvered into a weaker position, the diaspora argues that the silence that has surrounded the signing of the protocols is far from golden, and a tool in the hand of genocide-denial. That the protocols call for the setting up of a historical commission commits what the descendents of 1915 consider to be the ultimate crime of giving that denial a voice.
The alternative to the resumption to some sort of normalcy envisioned by the protocols is that grudges would be allowed to fester. Both sides will score their moral points but tomorrow will look suspiciously like today. On the other hand, once a dialogue is established, who knows what might change. Now may be the time to be silent but as Ecclesiastes puts it, there is also time to speak.
