State and Nation:
Their Roles after Independence

Address of Raffi K. Hovannisian
at an International Conference on
“The Armenian Genocide and Historical Memory: Challenge of the Twenty-First Century”
University of California, Los Angeles, April 8, 2000

The decades separating us from the Armenian Genocide, the prototype of modern-day nation-killings, have fundamentally changed the political composition of the region. Virtually no Armenians remain on their historic territories in what is today eastern Turkey. The Armenian people have been scattered about the world. And a small independent republic has come to replace the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was all that was left of the homeland as the result of Turkish invasion and Bolshevik collusion in 1920.

But one thing has stayed the same. Notwithstanding the eloquent, compelling evidence housed in the United States National Archives and repositories around the world, successive Turkish governments have denied that the predecessor Young Turk regime committed genocide. Making facially plausible but essentially empty arguments of an Armenian “rebellion,” a mutually deadly civil war, and Armenian collaboration with the Allied Powers in World War I, the Turkish authorities have flouted the worldwide testimony, rejected the charge of genocide, and—like the Nazis who followed—sought aggressively to deflect blame by accusing the victims themselves.

What is more, Turkish officialdom, far from educating new generations about the crimes of their ancestors, has attempted to cover up the evidence and has gone to great lengths to entice American and other apologists of some repute to assist in this effort. Perhaps the time has come for Turkey to reassess the propriety of its approach, to take Germany and its road to redemption as an exemplary precedent, and to begin the process that will allow it to move into a post-genocide era.

Turkey and the now-sovereign Republic of Armenia are neighbors. Since its declaration of independence in September 1991, Armenia has integrated into its foreign policy the desire to regulate relations with all neighboring countries, including Turkey, hoping in this case that initiation of consular and economic links would prepare in due course a climate in which political normalization would be possible. Ironically, it has been official Ankara, citing a variety of domestic and international considerations, which has not reciprocated in kind or intent, instead refusing to establish diplomatic ties with Erevan, closing the border to commercial traffic, passenger crossings, and humanitarian shipments, and thereby completing an Azerbaijani blockade of landlocked Armenia. Skirting the watershed issue of genocide and its legacy, then, has only compounded the relationship, which remains strained to this day.

In short, Turkey has not acted in good faith—to the detriment of both nations. Just as Armenia needs access to Turkish roads and ports to reach European destinations, so, too, does Turkey require unhindered transit over the Armenian roads and railways to points in the rest of the former Soviet Union. More important, at a time when Turkey faces a full internal, external, and Euro-integration agenda, both in political and economic terms, its interests should indeed dictate that it come out once and for all of its “genocide closet,” just as Armenia’s interests demand peace on its western frontier.

The Turkish-Armenian knot that history has bequeathed to both peoples can be untangled only by the normalization of relations. And the record of the past years demonstrates that normalization can result, not from a puerile fiction that nothing has happened in their history, but rather from a brave, fact-anchored reexamination of the issues dividing them, the definition of a program for negotiations, and the conclusion of a comprehensive, lasting solution achieved by direct dialogue and hard, honest exchanges of views.

Entering into political discourse with Armenia, rather than avoiding it, will enable Turkey to free itself and its generations from constantly having to look back defensively over the shoulder of their past. The Turkish youth will be able to learn the lessons associated with recognizing the excesses of the Ottoman state, as well as the heroic stories of individual Turks who saved many Armenians from certain death. And the Turkish state will send a signal to countries near and far that it is prepared to take the high road in advancing bilateral relationships, enhancing regional security, and finally grasping the connection between its image-robbing refusal to communicate on the Armenian Genocide and its ongoing affront to its own people’s openness and freedom of expression.

The proposed process will be easy neither for Turks nor for Armenians. In fact, governments on both sides of the border may offer resistance to this approach, arguing that it is not pragmatic or sensitive to the existing political landscape. Domestic opinion, for its part, may be unleashed to block development of discussions. But there is no escape. If Turkey and Armenia want to attain the heights of true normalization—window dressing excluded—then they must start facing the central questions of their common inheritance. These no doubt hold the keys to more peaceful, prosperous, and harmonious horizons. Turks and Armenians will have to defy the odds of history, grapple with their thorny issues, and ultimately give resolution to them. They owe it to the children of their children, who are destined to live side by side in the same geopolitical neighborhood.

Against this backdrop, the Armenian people and their republic face in the twenty-first century a complex challenge of defining identity and formulating policy in a way that responds at once to the imperatives of historical remembrance, the pursuit of vital state interests, and the controlling context of national security both in Armenia and abroad. Achievement of a broad-based consensus among the politically and geographically disparate components of the Armenian polity will require strategic vision, tactical flexibility, and a distinguished assumption and performance of roles.

At bottom, however, both nation and state, in contemplating their approaches in the new era to the Armenian Genocide, must coordinate and master a spectrum of activities between ensuring historical memory and pressing legal redemption, from defense of human rights to expression of collective aspirations. This critical equilibrium of ways and means accepts the genocide, its domestic and foreign instruction, and its universal affirmation as a necessary point of departure, and it views the physical and spiritual integrity of the Republic of Armenia, the Armenian Diaspora, and their history as national values to be protected at all cost.

The Armenian republic’s ambivalent policy since 1992 begs the question of state responsibility to remember national calamity. A variety of officials, both former and current, have joined a selection of foreign representatives in making the caveat that “politicizing” memory and thus preventing development of good-neighborly relations would resubmit Armenia to its all-too-frequent onerous fate in history. They posit the need to save subsequent generations from their genocide-driven shackles in order to take on a forward-looking modern identity that can keep stride with the growing demands and attractions of globalization.

The first years of the new Republic of Armenia were marked by fruitless Armenian initiatives and standard Turkish responses, including but not limited to demanding as a precondition Erevan’s relinquishment of “genocide claims,” relative to the policy objective of the normalization of relations. Witness as evidentiary examples (a) Armenian diplomacy’s first major challenge at the January 1992 meeting in Prague of the foreign ministers of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), where Armenia was granted membership in the organization only after its principled position compelled withdrawal of a threatened Turkish veto intended, among other things, to force Armenia to renounce any genocide-related claims, and (b) Turkey’s active lobbying of the Council of Europe to deprive Armenia of special guest status and ultimate membership, eliciting the Armenian foreign minister’s critique of Turkish policies at the ministerial meeting of the Council at Istanbul in September 1992.

This record, in a fundamental sense, has provided conceptual depth to and practical evidence of the following theses:

1. The entire range of positions taken by the Armenian nation and its constituent parts, in the first instance the Republic of Armenia, cannot but be founded on historical memory. There indeed does exist room and reason for diversity of substantive approaches between state and nation, homeland and diaspora, political associations and non-governmental rights groups. But the fundamental policy source, from which flows the immutable procedural right of the Armenian people to seek recognition, demand redress, and obtain some degree of closure, is one and the same. This axiom applies equally to activity in the executive, judicial, legislative, and educational realms.


2. Recognition, resolution, and reconciliation are in the interest of the Armenian and Turkish peoples and states but will require positive external impulses. This encompassing statement underscores the pressing need for a qualitative differentiation between past and present, for personal cleansing and an ethical recasting of expedient politics, for unified defense against recurrence, and for creation of a new security architecture in the region. A first step in this long process of normalization requires the international community to bring the matter of genocide affirmation above board by renewing official recognition and encouraging Turkey to do so as well. In this process, the United States will play a leading role. Official American recognition of the Armenian Genocide is among the most important contributions Washington can make to the long-term interests of Armenia and Turkey, to stability along Armenia’s border with Turkey, and therefore to development of a crucial new system of regional security in which the two states are true partners. In view of its own complicity in the Armenian Genocide, Germany also has a special responsibility to support Armenia and Turkey toward this end.


3. There can be no comprehensive normalization of relations without such resolution and the attendant mutual respect, although confidence-building measures in advance might under certain circumstances facilitate attainment of that objective. Joint economic, scientific, cultural, and academic endeavors can be helpful in creating a favorable atmosphere if they demonstrate historical regard, not state-sponsored revisionism. Yet such initiatives alone will not be deep or broad enough to surmount the genocide-founded wall of distrust. While certain Turkish scholarly circles recently have taken commendable steps along this way, they remain far from representing the academic mainstream, let alone the ever-potent political-military establishment. Similarly, trade and commercial contacts between the countries, expressive as they are of natural economic propensities, still are indirect, intermediate, and perforce of episodic character. In this connection, the Armenian authorities have sometimes taken a tactically conciliatory position on the genocide issue in the belief that Turkey could move beyond its irrational defense mechanisms and, in shared trust, normalize relations in these and all other spheres. In each case, however, they have been disappointed. Tactical compromise of the genocide, it has been repeatedly shown, can never achieve real long-range results.


4. The underlying national bedrock, for the state as for the people, entails full settlement of the matter but never at the expense of the security of either. Vital state interests and Armenian security dimensions draw on the national genocide experience as policy lesson and guide—the imperative to defend Armenian rights, individual and collective, around the world and simultaneously to deal flexibly and effectively in a geostrategically charged environment. Armenia’s administration and the Armenian people must steer clear of serving the shifting interests of external forces or of embracing without warranty the enticing pledges proffered by others. Rather, it behooves them to forge a strong, secure, and legitimate state structure, which is an essential prerequisite for the cultivation of political conditions for recognition of the Armenian Genocide.


5. The Armenians and, for that matter, the Turks of the twenty-first century, whether on an official level or as ordinary citizens, at home and in dispersion, can become constructive, modern contributors to peace and progress, culture and civilization. This engagement envisages a self-confident tete-â-tete with their history, drawing lessons from it and finding their roles relating to it, not seeking the hatch to a false modernity that is devoid of memory and hence of meaning, conscience, and identity. Identity depends on the possibility of communication; truth sets it free, while untruth empties it. Just as an imprisoned individual loses his liberty and thus himself, so too has the Armenian Genocide deprived Turkey of its self-esteem and self-recognition. The state guards against and fights away even involuntary revelations and consequently disparages freedom of thought and expression to this very day. Turkey’s coming to terms with itself would be tantamount to discovering a path between its past and present culpability—a discovery based on integrity and dialogue with its own citizenry, the Armenian people, and the world. In this vein, the declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust in January 2000 testifies to the currency and capacity of concerted, recognition-oriented governmental and public action and forcefully rejects ulteriorly-motivated pronouncements about “politicizing memory” and “legislating history.”

As they now stand, however, Armenia and Turkey are very much prisoners of the past. Without attempts to address that past, they will continue to find themselves in opposite camps in the Caucasus and elsewhere and thereby help ensure opportunities for fomenting regional conflict and division. Mutual mistrust between Turkey and Armenia stemming from the genocide thus attains contemporary context and remains a threat to local, regional, and overall Eurasian security. The legacy of the genocide, for instance, has loomed large over the Mountainous Karabagh conflict. The Karabagh Armenians, unable to exorcise the ghost of the past and fearing total annihilation, have forged an independent republic. Meanwhile, Turkey, haunted by its past as well as future ramifications, has looked on with consternation as Armenians restore lands once lost to Azerbaijani dominion. In this sense, the Karabagh-Azerbaijani conflict has become the vehicle through which both Turks and Armenians continue to live out their worst fears of each other, fears rooted in the inheritance of genocide.

With this legacy unresolved and unrequited, Turkey will remain ever wary that a politically, diplomatically, and economically powerful Armenia may someday raise the issue of the genocide and make derivative claims for reparations and restitution. Armenia’s concerns are existential and self-evident. Until Turkey makes the long-awaited breakthrough to European benchmarks, rule of law, and self-deliverance, therefore, we can expect that Ankara will do all it can to prevent the emergence of a sound and stable Armenian state.

Nevertheless, unless both Turkey and Armenia confront the genocide head-on, it will hold their relations, and thus relevant security interests, hostage. Like Germany or Japan in this respect, Turkey is unlikely without international encouragement and pressure to face an inconvenient past on its own. And while the importance of normalization has not been lost on European and American policymakers, their efforts have thus far failed because they have tried to ignore the Armenian Genocide, its causes and consequences, as the source of reciprocal suspicion. They have not, therefore, exerted their influence with clear-cut purpose and sharp focus.

The primary argument for international recognition and tangible measures toward resolution is overwhelming. Renewed affirmation will provide Turkey and Armenia with a foundation for understanding and accepting their history, eliminating their mutual lack of confidence, exploring their combined comparative advantages, and rendering their relations meet and right. Coming clean on the genocide issue is also one of the principal avenues for helping Turkey move on to create frontiers of peace and harmony, not only with Armenia but also with all of its neighbors.

Against the changing map of Europe, Turkey can no longer persuasively threaten that world recognition of the Armenian Genocide would affect its long-standing claim to NATO’s southern bulwark against communism and other undesirable ideologies. Among the less serious Turkish arguments against recognition have been that it would encourage Armenian political violence or that the historical record is unclear. Armenian terrorism, which was born of Turkish state terror and denial, effectively wrapped up years ago, and there is sufficient documentation in the archives of Germany alone, an ally of Turkey at the time of the Armenian Genocide, to put to rest the Turkish campaign to deny the crime.

Sadly, Turkey’s inability to date to deal with the genocide translates into no normalization of relations with Armenia, and their standing failure to “assume history” (French: il faut assumer l’histoire) into the incarceration of Turkey and Armenia amid the past. That state of affairs means that Armenia and Turkey necessarily become surrogates in a larger power game over which neither has any real control, and their bilateral relations continue to play a major destabilizing role in the region. This is already happening. The results for both sides are unpredictable. Neither one can be sure that it will come out ahead. And there are grave implications for regional stability and global security.

Moreover, the incoherence, perhaps utter absence of a multi-functional Armenian strategy also does disservice to the special role Armenia and the Armenian people should be undertaking in the struggle for human rights. Recognition of the genocide goes beyond both parochial Armenian and Turkish concerns and regional and world security interests. It is a question of universal ethical dimensions affecting all humanity. The official, political, juridical, and thorough multidisciplinary recognition of the Jewish Holocaust, as refreshed in the declaration of the Stockholm international forum on the subject, and the correspondingly striking non-recognition of the Armenian Genocide send the message that some genocides are impermissible while others are tolerated and that this duality has more to do with power politics than the uniform application of international law and principles of human rights. This may be so in the real world, but in fact with no clear message on genocide, that crime of crimes in its various forms continues in the post-world-war world to constitute an increasingly important instrument for preserving arbitrarily-created borders or dealing with minority constituencies.

It is beyond doubt that history and morality, government action and political puissance, precept and practicality, right and might are all intertwined factors in the battle still being waged between meaningful remembrance and interest-based denial. The Armenian state and nation need to take full stock of this mix and strive toward their lawful goal with endurance and coordinated efforts.

In sum, the international community should have an interest in promoting a fresh, new approach to the relationship of the NATO member-state of Turkey with the friendly, strategically-placed country of Armenia. For reasons of regional security, economic development, and increased cooperation in a potentially volatile area of the world, individual governments might consider reviewing their own policies and weighing in on the side of creative, contemporary solutions that address, not evade, the problem at hand. So that the twenty-first century will not begin like the blood-drenched start of its predecessor, Ankara as the senior government ought to be persuaded to take the initiative in creating a good-faith, confidence-building environment free of the past rigid policies and conducive to open and frank communications. And while annual commemorations of the Armenian Genocide may come and go without much perceptible change, it is incumbent on Armenians to continue in their quest for justice and on Turks to search their souls for who they were, who they are, and, if they take the right turn, who they can be in regional and international affairs.

Turkey and its people might properly assume this higher mission by looking truth in the face and daring to turn a new page in Turkish-Armenian relations. We wish them every success and self-confidence in bridging this most monumental divide of their modern history. Apart and together, but always in balance, independent Armenia and its people the world over must be strong and steady enough to stay the course, shed their light all about, and attain the redemptive day of truth’s triumph—with distinction, determination, and dignity.

The National Citizens’ Initiative is a public non-profit association founded in December 2001 by Raffi K. Hovannisian, his colleagues, and fellow citizens with the purpose of realizing the rule of law and overall improvements in the state of the state, society, and public institutions. The National Citizens’ Initiative is guided by a Coordinating Council, which includes individual citizens and representatives of various public, scientific, and educational establishments. Five commissions on Law and State Administration, Socioeconomic Issues, Foreign Policy, Spiritual and Cultural Challenges, and the Youth constitute the vehicles for the Initiative’s work and outreach.

For further information, please call (37410) 27-16-00 or 27-00-03; fax (37410) 52-48-46; e-mail info@nci.am