US diplomat backs proposed commission on Armenian issue

A senior US diplomat has indicated the Obama administration's support for Turkey's almost five-year-old proposal to establish a joint commission of historians to resolve the question of whether the killings of Anatolian Armenians during World War I amounted to genocide. Remarks by Philip Gordon, assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian affairs, came on Tuesday at a hearing of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives. The hearing, chaired by Congressman Robert Wexler, was titled “Strengthening the Transatlantic Alliance: An Overview of the Obama Administration's Policies in Europe.”
Gordon recalled that he had recently paid visits to Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia since he observed that there are both challenges and opportunities in this region.
“You have two parallel but separate tracks going on; a Turkey-Armenia normalization reconciliation process that we do think is quite potentially historic, where the two countries have agreed on a framework for normalizing their relations. That would include opening the border, which has been closed for far too long, which would establish diplomatic relations and would provide commissions in key areas, including history,” Gordon said. He was apparently referring to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's 2005 letter to then-Armenian President Robert Kocharyan, inviting him to establish a joint commission of historians and experts from both Turkey and Armenia to study the events of 1915 using documents from the archives of Turkey, Armenia and any other country believed to have played a part in the issue.
At a joint press conference in Ankara during Obama's landmark visit to Turkey in early April, President Abdullah Gül recalled the proposal and said: “If it has a high interest in this issue, any country -- for example, it may be the US, it may be France -- can join this joint commission of historians, and we are ready to [face] the results.”
Gordon, meanwhile, also said: “And we encourage that process and we support it. We have said that it is an independent process and believe that it should move forward, regardless of whatever else is happening in Europe or anywhere else, because both countries would benefit. That said, it is nonetheless the case that at the same time negotiations on Nagorno-Karabakh are going on between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and that is part of the context in which the region moves forward. And we're encouraging that process as well. So, again, our view is that these are separate tracks. They're moving forward at different speeds. But we are engaged vigorously on both, because if both were to succeed, it really would be an historic opportunity for the region, from which all three of those countries would benefit.”
Gordon's remarks found a rapid response from the US-based Armenian diaspora. In a press release delivered later the same day, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) said, “The establishment of an Armenia-Turkey commission of historians, a measure Turkey has long sought to cast a doubt over the overwhelming historical record of the Armenian genocide, stands in stark contrast to President Obama's statements during his campaign for the White House.”

18 June 2009, Thursday
TODAY'S ZAMAN ANKARA
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