The Wider Context
of President Biden's Armenian Statement
Biden’s recognition of
the killing and deportation of Armenians as genocide has caused outrage in
Turkey. Dealing with a nation’s past is immensely complex. It can only be done
by a country’s leaders and citizens.
·
April 27, 2021
Well before November 3, 2020, it was clear that a
Biden-Harris presidency would be a principled one, firmly anchored in democracy
and justice, human rights, and the rule of law.
Since U.S. President Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day, these
principles have been applied by the White House, from George Floyd’s death to
the case of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, from Belarus to the
Uighurs, from access to coronavirus vaccines to the economic recovery plan. On
these matters, the page has been turned on the Donald Trump presidency.
The latest reflection of the current administration’s
principles is Biden’s statement on April 24,
Armenian Remembrance Day: the killing and deportation of 1.5 million Armenians
beginning in 1915 amounted to genocide.
The language used in the statement is careful and
precise. It refers to atrocities in Constantinople during the Ottoman era and
then turns to the future, sending the message that the U.S. is not casting
blame on today’s Turkey but rather trying to “ensure that what happened is
never repeated.”
The general notion of honoring the victims’ memory in
order to “remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate on all
its forms” is repeated no less than five times in Joe Biden’s statement.
As seen from Brussels, the Biden statement shows a
distinct convergence with the European Union, where the “never again” motto has
been the founding principle since the Schuman Declaration of May 9, 1950.
In the eyes of older Europeans, the statement also
sends a timely message to the younger citizens of America and Europe who could
be tempted to forget the atrocities of World War II. It evokes the historic
gestures of successive French and German leaders: Konrad Adenauer visiting
Charles De Gaulle in 1958, Willy Brand kneeling down in Warsaw in 1970, Helmut
Kohl holding hands with François Mitterrand in Douaumont in 1984. And it
matches Emmanuel Macron’s constant focus on historical memory.
Most of Turkey’s citizens and politicians are not
likely to be impressed by Joe Biden’s statement. On the contrary, a vast
majority immediately rejected it and Turkey’s president has called it
“baseless, unjust, and untrue.”
Such outrage should come as no surprise. The events
between 1915 and 1923—from the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the carving up of
the country in the never-ratified Sèvres Treaty, Mustafa Kemal’s war of
independence, the Lausanne Treaty, to the proclamation of the Republic in
1923—are the cornerstones of today’s Turkey.
This outrage over Biden’s statement might be brief or
long-lasting, but Turkey will not change its position, especially as the
centennial celebrations of the Republic are approaching. Dealing with one’s
past is an immensely complex process, which can only be done by the leaders and
citizens of a given country. Foreigners generally have little influence on it.
Turkey’s strong reaction will not make the U.S., many
European states, or Russia change their views on the Armenian genocide. On
April 26, Turkey’s president declared “we now need to put aside our
disagreements and look at what steps we can take from now on”, signaling a
willingness to move on.
Therefore, in the short-term, a tacit “agree to
disagree” acknowledgement is probably the best off-ramp. The political dialogue
between Washington and Ankara will shift to other crucial subjects.
Indeed, U.S.-Turkey relations will likely be shaped by
the security sector, not statements about the past. The central issue is the
new situation created for the United States, for Europe, and for NATO as a
whole, by Turkey’s deployment of Russian-made S400 missiles.
For all the talk of Ankara’s freedom in striking a
balance between East and West—meaning not being “locked” in the transatlantic
alliance and being free to procure weapons from whomever it decides—the stark
reality is that the S400 purchase has provided Russia with three major
strategic benefits.
First, it prevents a permanent deployment of U.S.-made
Patriot missiles on its southern flank.
Second, it eliminates the prospect of seeing up to 120
F35 stealth aircraft deployed by Turkey—one hundred F35 on land bases, twenty
F35b on the Anadolu helicopter carrier—which would have constituted an ominous
challenge on its southern flank.
And third, it obliges NATO to reconsider its missile
defense architecture, with Turkey’s air force being split between conventional
units linked to NATO and missile defense units linked, in one way or another,
to Russia.
From the standpoint of Russia, which often invokes the
risk if a “NATO encirclement,” these are momentous achievements.
For Turkey, seeing its air force deprived of so many
advanced stealth fighters and its military industry lose billions of dollars of
subcontracting business is a massive failure. It affects the country’s standing
as a military power and as a high-technology center.
Viewed from a Western European and American security
perspective, this new situation inevitably creates a significant loss of trust
in Turkey, which is a major NATO partner.
With
its historical narrative being challenged as much as its strategic relationship
with NATO, Ankara will need to find some rapprochement with a U.S.
administration that puts principles and strategic issues so high up on its
agenda.
Pierini is a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, where his research
focuses on developments in the Middle East and Turkey from a European
perspective.
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