Note- This chapter is from Tatul Hakobyan’s book- Armenian and Turks
In Soviet Armenia, during the last years of the USSR, three prevalent attitudes existed on Turkey and the future of Armenian-Turkish relations: communist, ANM (Armenian National Movement), and traditional Diasporan, the main bearer of which was the ARF-Dashnaktsutyun. From 1988-1991, contradictory shifts were sometimes noticeable in the understanding of these three political directions towards Turkey, the Armenian Genocide, and the Armenian Cause.
1988-1991 was the period when the Soviet Union was collapsing and communists were losing their seats of power in some of the union’s republics, including in Armenia. In the summer of 1990, the ANM came to power. This new political party included former communists, power-seekers, as well as nationalists, liberals, and figures professing other value systems amongst its ranks.
In the beginning, the ANM’s position on the issue of Armenian-Turkish relations was inconstant, contradictory, and sometimes even illogical. The main reason behind that was probably because the ANM was not a monolith. The rapid changes in the situation of the Soviet Union and East-West relations also cannot be ignored. From the end of the summer of 1990, when the ANM came to power still in Soviet Armenia, its stance on the issue of Turkey became clear and unchanging.
In the ANM’s programme, which was penned by ANM ideologist Vazgen Manukyan and which was made public for the first time during a rally on October 19, 1988, it was planned to get to the point where, “the Supreme Soviets of the Armenian SSR and the USSR accept the fact of the 1915 Armenian Genocide and approach the UN with the demand that it recognise that fact, declare April 24 in Armenia as the memorial day for the victims of the Mets Yeghern, and constantly raise the demand for territories historically a part of Armenia as well as those recognised as Armenian in international agreements to be reunited.”
One month later, Manukyan announced that Armenia can live in peace with all four of its immediate neighbours – Turkey, Iran, Georgia, and Azerbaijan – and that Armenians did not need mediators. “If issues arise with those neighbours, if we manage to resolve them, we will, and, if not, we will be silent. But we must not rule out the possibility of living in peace and harmony with all neighbours. We have convinced both ourselves and Russia that we cannot live without her and she does whatever she wishes to do with us. That evil lies in the basis of the relations between us and Russia and all of our losses are based on that.”
Manukyan wrote that, “Many fear independence because our proximity to Turkey,” but, “those same people are constantly talking, with inexplicable bravery, about taking lands back from Turkey.” He added: “Many note that, after gaining independence, we will be forced to face powerful Turkey, whose aim is to eliminate Armenia and to unite with Azerbaijan, which has some religious and ethnic generality with it. We must understand that the Russian army is here not to defend the Armenians, but because those are the interests of the empire. The Soviet Union is a collapsing empire and sooner or later its interests will require that the army leave here.”
On the one hand, the ANM’s ideologists found it important to establish friendly relations with Turkey while, on the other hand, they included points in the programme of the movement that obviously made the Turks nervous and made the vision to establish relations nearly impossible. Thus, the movement’s programme wanted “to reach the recognition by the UN of the 1915 Armenian Genocide and the international recognition of the historical and legal right of the Armenian nation towards territories seized from Armenia,” as well as struggle for the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR “to acknowledge the articles concerning Armenia in the March 16, 1921, Russian-Turkish treaty, as illegal.”
In the ANM’s November 1989 programme, it was said that, while implementing its national plans, the Armenian nation must rely on its own powers, without counting on the support of others. “The mentality that a nation has permanent friends and permanent enemies, and not permanent national interests, is a political delusion.” By saying “permanent friend” and “permanent enemy,” the ANM primarily had Russia and Turkey in mind: traditional Armenian political thought was inclined to think of the first as a permanent friend and the second as a permanent enemy.
Philologist and historian Raphael Ishkhanyan, as well as Vazgen Manukyan and Levon Ter-Petrosyan, severely criticised the mentality of relying on a “Third Force.” Ishkhanyan even considered the idea of having a “permanent friend and permanent enemy” as a sign of political immaturity. Armenians “have never had and do not have and cannot have a permanent friend or a permanent enemy. … In the world, on the entire globe, Armenia can only be in one location: next to the Turks. Armenia does not exist, and cannot be, anywhere else. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is a different issue, but it is an indisputable fact. Moreover, this piece of Armenia is surrounded by Turks on all four sides. The Turks and Azerbaijanis have no intention of leaving these parts. The Russians may one day leave. They have already once left these parts, in 1917-1918, and we reached the brink of final destruction then,” Ishkhanyan wrote, concluding, “If Pan-Turkism truly exists, then we Armenians have one way to survive: sign a peace agreement with Pan-Turkism.”
According to Ishkhanyan, the Communist Partyof Armenia and the ARF-Dashnaktsutyun were using the Turkish threat with enthusiasm and “they are allies in that regard”. “The Communist Party uses that factor to keep Armenians permanently dependent on the Russian Empire. This is an old method the meaning of which is – Armenians, do not think about independence, you are lost without Russia, Turkey will massacre you all. For many years the Communist Party has injected that primitive mentality into the brains of Armenians, in order to keep our 900- year-long slavery irreversible.”
Ter-Petrosyan declared that a state’s existence is not guaranteed as long as that state has not established normal relations, primarily with its immediate neighbours. Among them, he had Turkey first in mind, with which the first step should be trade, and then cultural ties, and finally political relations, without forgetting about demands. “The Yeghern and those people who have been dispossessed,” however, cannot be turned into a political issue. According to Ter-Petrosyan, the Armenian Cause is an ideology, the historical right of the Armenian nation, which no one renounces, but, “Today that ideology cannot be our state policy; an ideology can become state policy only when a state can deal with that issue.”
The ARF-Dashnaktsutyun is the main bearer of the Armenian Cause. In August 1988, in the announcement of ARF’s 24th General Congress, it was said that, “The threat of Pan-Turkism is as present today as it was yesterday.”25 The party Bureau’s organ, Droshak, warned in its issues not to ignore “the Turkish threat.” Dashnak leaders frequently referred to the Turkish threat in articles. “The ARF considers Armenia’s independence its main purpose. But we think that it is not the time to present demands for immediate independence, when our nation needs the help of the Russian nation. In order to understand this it is necessary to go to the bank of the Akhurian to see the Turkish soldiers standing on the opposite bank and the ruins of Ani,” ARF Bureau Representative Hrayr Marukhian explained.
Vazgen Manukyan insisted that, in negotiations with Turkey, “Our precondition should be the acceptance of the fact of the 1915 Genocide, with all its consequences. …Turkey will present its conditions. I do understand that my proposal will not raise enthusiasm amongst Armenians, especially Diasporan Armenians. Psychologically it is hard to return to true politics, sometimes to flexible policies, which Armenia’s authorities conducted during the gruelling years of 1918-1920.”
In later years, in response to the opposition’s criticism that the ANM is pro-Turkish, Ter-Petrosyan reminded them of the years of Armenia’s First Republic, 1918-1920:“If the aim to develop normal relations with Turkey as a neighbouring country and carry out mutually-beneficial co-operation is considered as such [as pro-Turkish], then yes, we are pro-Turkish to that extent. If the fact of receiving wheat and other vital goods through Turkey is considered as such, then yes, we are pro-Turkish. In that case, we should not forget that, in 1918, one of the first actions of Aram Manukyan was receiving 20,000put of wheat for those starving in Armenia at the hands of Halil Pasha, that slaughterer of the Armenian nation.”
Just like the communist elite, a segment of Armenia’s population – as well as the Diasporan parties, especially the ARF-Dashnaktsutyun – thought that, after gaining independence, Armenia would be forced to face up to Turkey and Pan-Turkism. Thus, Turkish threats were set against the idea of Armenia’s independence.
Whereas the main objective of the ARF and the ANM was Armenia’s independence, with the difference that the ANM considered the threats of Pan-Turkism and Turkey to be a past phase, the Communist Party of Armenia, which still had certain leverage over the authorities, continued to see Armenia’s future within the structure of the terminally-ill Soviet Union. The fervently-Russophile communist intellectuals, who bore Russian culture and considered Russian their mother tongue, continued their “forever with the Russian nation” idea, which was supported amongst a wide circle of Armenians of different strata.
