Armenia and Turkey: The truce in need of a rescue

Opinion

They have a chance to make peace over their troubled past and move forward -- or balk and leave themselves, and their region, worse off than before.

February 05, 2010|By Henri J. Barkey and Thomas de Waal

But Armenia can take smaller steps to break the deadlock. Owing to the geography of this region, everyone suffers. Azerbaijan also has an isolated territory that suffers economically -- the exclave of Nakhichevan, separated from the rest of Azerbaijan by an unfriendly Armenia, its road and rail links severed. As a gesture of goodwill, the Yerevan government could take steps to ease the blockade of Nakhichevan in parallel with the opening of the Armenian-Turkish border. The Armenians could also begin work on rehabilitating the long-defunct railway line that once connected Azerbaijan, Armenia, Nakhichevan and Turkey. It is a sad symbol of the closed borders and suspicions that cripple this region, but one day it could be a major east-west transport route. The Turks would be wise to hail such an initiative as a success and move on with ratifying the protocols.

More broadly, better relations with Armenia offer Turkey a chance to lift the burden of history from its shoulders. Turkey's ambitious foreign policy, with its goal of "zero problems with its neighbors" and becoming the central power in its region, will come to nothing if its enmity with Armenia endures. Tiny Armenia may be dwarfed by Turkey's size and clout, but it can lay claim to a moral imperative.

Henri J. Barkey is a professor of international relations at Lehigh University and a visiting senior scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where Thomas de Waal is a senior associate on the Caucasus.

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