ARMENIA THIS WEEK
Monday, June 20, 2005
In this issue:
Western observers praise Karabakh parliamentary poll
Karabakh election seen as victory for pro-establishment parties
German Parliament condemns Armenian Genocide
Turkish scholar: Turkey still refuses to confront its past
WESTERN OBSERVERS PRAISE KARABAKH PARLIAMENTARY POLL
Nagorno Karabakh’s June 19 parliamentary election was “conducted freely and transparently,” according to preliminary reports from over 100 observers from more than dozen countries who monitored the poll. Over 75 percent of eligible Karabakhis turned out to elect the republic’s fourth parliament since independence in what became the most tightly contested ballot to date leaving no single party in majority control of the legislature.
A delegation from the U.S.-based Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG), comprised of former State Department officials and academics, observed the pre-election campaign and voting in all 22 of Karabakh’s electoral districts. PILPG found that “Nagorno Karabakh has made demonstrable progress in building democracy.” The group also recommended more election staff training and voter education to eliminate technical shortcomings during voting. At a press-conference following the vote, PILPG Executive Director Paul Williams dismissed Azerbaijan’s criticism of the elections and urged Baku instead to focus on its own political shortcomings.
Other observers similarly reported no significant irregularities either during voting or vote count. Jana Hradilkova, a human rights activist from the Czech Republic, described the election conduct as “very free, without any tension.” Zoran Pusi ć, head of the Croatian Civic Committee for Human Rights, was present during vote count and reported no irregularities, praising Karabakhis for their high sense of civic duty.
Armenia’s Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian hailed the election as the latest example of the Karabakh people’s determination to democratically decide their own future. The election was also welcomed by Armenia’s political opposition. Parliament members Aram Sargsian and Arshak Sadoyan, both from the opposition Justice (Artarutiun) Bloc, who observed the election, lauded the vote’s conduct. (Sources: Mediamax 6-18; PILPG Preliminary Report 6-19; Regnum.ru 6-19, 20; Arminfo 6-21)
KARABAKH ELECTION SEEN AS VICTORY FOR PRO-ESTABLISHMENT PARTIES
Preliminary results published on-line by the Nagorno Karabakh’s Central Election Committee give the ruling Democratic Party (AZhK) twelve seats in the newly-elected 33-member Parliament, with ten seats going to the recently established Free Motherland Party (AHK), three to the Bloc of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutiun) and the Movement 88 political parties, and the remaining eight seats to candidates unaffiliated with political parties.
The new parliament was elected through a mixed majoritarian and proportional system, with 22 seats filled through direct voting for individual candidates in electoral districts and 11 proportionally shared by parties and blocs that received over ten and fifteen percent of the total vote, respectively. With over 22,000 votes in its favor (over 37 percent of all), AZhK won five of the 11 proportional seats. AHK with close to 16,000 votes (27 percent) and the Dashnaktsutiun-Movement 88 Bloc with 14,500 votes (24 percent) each won three proportional seats. AZhK, AHK and non-partisan candidates dominated majoritarian races.
In majoritarian races, Stepanakert’s first electoral district had one of the closest contests anywhere in Karabakh, with non-party businessman Armen Abgarian collecting 558 votes and edging out three tough challengers, including one of AHK leaders, Professor Arpat Avanesian with 539 votes, Armenakan Party’s incumbent MP Artur Sargsian with 526 votes and one of HHD leaders, former Education Minister Armen Sargsian with 457 votes. Abgarian is a former army officer and close associate of then Karabakh Defense Minister Samvel Babayan.
Election results represent a net loss of seats for the ruling AZhK, which had a 20-seat majority faction in the outgoing parliament. At the same time, the AHK’s success all but assures that President Arkady Ghoukasian will have a largely cooperative majority in parliament despite AZhK’s losses. AHK was established by local businessmen and academics, including former Parliament Speaker and 1997 presidential hopeful Artur Tovmasian, and is moderately critical of the current government. The results represent a major upset for the opposition Dashnaktsutiun-Movement 88 Bloc, whose candidates scored important victories during last year’s municipal elections. While the Bloc leaders have complained that their opponents used the benefits of incumbency and business support to rally voters, they did not report specific cases of fraud and admitted that the outcome was also a result of their own campaign’s mistakes. (Sources: www.elections.nkr.am ; Mediamax 6-18; Regnum.ru 6-19, 20)
BUNDESTAG CONDEMNS ARMENIAN GENOCIDE, REGRETS GERMAN ROLE
Germany’s federal parliament, the Bundestag, adopted a unanimous resolution last week condemning the massacres and deportations of Armenians in the Ottoman Turkey and urged the present-day Republic of Turkey to address its past. The Bundestag also expressed regret that Germany, as Turkey’s World War I ally, failed to act to stop what became the first Genocide of the 20th century. Germany became the ninth European Union nation to issue a resolution on the Armenian Genocide. Armenia’s leaders praised the move as another significant step in international effort to prevent future crimes against humanity. (Sources: Deutscher Bundestag 6-15; Arminfo 6-16)
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A WEEKLY NEWSLETTER PUBLISHED BY THE ARMENIAN ASSEMBLY OF AMERICA
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The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Friday, June 3, 2005 Page A21
Turkey still refuses to confront its past
By FATMA MUGE GOCEK
Last week was supposed to mark the opening of an unprecedented Turkish conference on the issues surrounding the killing of Armenians during the First World War. Organized at Istanbul's Bosporus University, the three-day event was intended to provide a platform to academics to question Turkey's official view of the 1915 killings. It also would have showcased a new open approach by Turkish authorities, eager to show the kind of freedom of expression that the European Union expects of prospective members.
The conference never took place.
In the days leading up to the event, pressure was put on organizers to include scholars who would defend Turkey's official state view -- which denies that the killings were genocide and rejects estimates that 1.5 million Armenians were massacred.
The more the university organizers resisted any such intervention, the more the pressure mounted, with the conference ultimately being described as "detrimental to the interests of the Turkish state and nation."
Turkish Justice Minister Cemil Cicek condemned the gathering as "treason" and "a stab in the back of the Turkish people." University officials had little choice but to "postpone" the event.
It is apparent that the government feels threatened by the significant segment of the Turkish population who are increasingly determined to face the long-standing issue of the Armenian question in a way that counters the official Turkish thesis.
This official view is predicated on a Turkish nationalism that perceives all existing interpretations of the Armenian issue as either for, or against, the interests of Turkey. Because the conference participants did not sanction the official thesis, the Turkish government characterized the participants as rabble-rousers.
The Turkish state is unable to come to terms with its past because its national identity is predicated upon the rejection of that particular past. Advocating the nationalist ideology that the contemporary Turkish state was built upon the ashes of the Ottoman Empire through the War of Independence fought between 1919-1922, the Turkish state has always argued that the nation had to look forward and not back into its past, especially not into the period before 1919 that is considered to be the birth year of the Turkish nation.
The alphabet reform in 1928, when the official script was changed from Arabic to the Latin script, further alienated the Turks from their own history. Given the dearth of historical knowledge, Turkish society could not help but accept the official thesis on the Armenian issue as historical reality.
With more scholars delving into that past to generate their own interpretations, the state thesis began to lose ground. The state efforts to cancel the Istanbul conference comprise what I hope is the last attempt to salvage the dominance of the Turkish official state thesis.
Turkey's possible membership in the European Union is an underlying reason why debate of the Armenian issue is becoming increasingly prominent. The EU advocates the recognition and protection of the rights of all minorities. Among such minorities that currently exist in Turkey, the tragedy that befell the Armenians before, during and after 1915, is the most dramatic, and the one that needs to be most addressed and recognized by Turkish society and the state. Such recognition necessitates an awareness of minority rights and a public commitment to protect them.
Yet, such a recognition would undermine the Turkish state's control over the public sphere. The unwillingness of the Turkish state in general, and the military and the political parties in particular, to relinquish that control over society has generated this crisis. This state unwillingness translates into a nationalist stand that portrays European standards of human rights as inherently destructive and debilitating. All advocates of such rights within Turkish society likewise end up branded as subversive elements in service of either Europe or the United States or both.
The chances of Turkey joining the European Union are diminished without a state commitment to protect the rights of its citizens. In the meanwhile, however, recent developments in Turkish society such as the liberalization of the economy and the privatization of mass communication have generated an increasingly conscious and vocal public sphere that is willing to take issue with the current nationalist stand of the state. If the current government utilizes its enhanced communication with Turkish society -- if it forms, in particular, alliances with the liberal academics and public intellectuals to develop a new democratic, multicultural vision for Turkey – then the Turkish state could overcome this quagmire.
Fatma Muge Gocek, associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, was an organizer of the cancelled Turkish-Armenia conference.
