Ohran Pamuk, il genocidio armeno e il nazionalismo turco

Wirepullers: Turchia e Armenia sarebbero sul punto di risolvere un conflitto in atto dal secolo scorso. Precisamente dal 1915-1916, biennio in cui un numero variabile tra i 950.000 e i 3.500.000 Armeni, a seconda che a dirlo sia Ankara o Yerevan, furono deportati e uccisi dall'esercito turco e da milizie curde. Il genocidio è ancora oggi una ferita aperta per Ankara, a tal punto che parlarne in pubblico può costare il carcere. Ad accelerare questo riavvicinamento tra i due paesi ha contribuito la guerra dell'anno scorso in Georgia, la quale avrebbe creato un blocco all'economia locale, costringendo gli attori dell'area a cercare nuove strade. Ed ecco quindi che viene istituita una commissione mista turco-armena, che dovrà stabilire se il genocidio ci sia veramente stato e in che misura. Come dire, se gli affari in qualche modo devono andare avanti, la storia non può essere un intralcio. Con la brutta sensazione che il gas che scalderà le nostre case tra qualche anno passerà sopra quei morti. (4)

Forse si riapre il processo contro lo scrittore turco, colpevole di aver parlato del genocidio armeno e dei massacri contro i curdi. La Turchia sta scivolando verso un misto di fondamentalismo islamico e di nazionalismo. Fra i segnali: l’amicizia con la Siria e con l’Iran. Articolo del 18.05.2009

Torna di attualità il famigerato articolo 301 del Codice Penale turco che prevede severe condanne per chi osa portare “vilipendio all'identità nazionale turca”. Nel corso degli ultimi anni esso ha messo a tacere numerosi intellettuali che osavano contestare il “democratico Governo turco”. Nel mirino è ancora lo scrittore Orhan Pamuk, per un caso archiviato da tre anni.

Proprio mentre lo scrittore, primo turco ad essere insignito del Premio Nobel per la Letteratura (2006), si trovava a Firenze per ricevere la laurea honoris causa, si è sparsa la voce che con ogni probabilità dovrà di nuovo comparire di fronte ai giudici turchi per aver “offeso l’identità turca”.
In realtà si tratta di un’accusa ormai vecchia, seppure ben presente nella memoria di tutti.

Nato a Istanbul nel 1952, nel 2005 Pamuk è stato accusato per aver dichiarato al settimanale svizzero Das Magazin che “noi turchi abbiamo ucciso 30 mila curdi e un milione di armeni e nessuno, tranne me, in Turchia osa parlarne”. È stato però assolto dal tribunale di Istanbul, anche e soprattutto grazie all'intermediazione della comunità internazionale che ha sollecitato la parziale modifica dell'art. 301, approvata nel maggio 2008, cancellando la generica “offesa dell'identità turca” e sostituendola con una più dettagliata “offesa allo Stato o agli organi dello Stato turco”.

Il 14 maggio scorso la Corte suprema ad Ankara ha deciso, però, di rigettare la decisione del Tribunale di primo grado e di procedere contro Pamuk proprio per aver riconosciuto il suo Paese responsabile del “genocidio” armeno – parola tabù per la nazione turca - ai tempi dell'Impero Ottomano, e commettendo così un grave reato secondo quanto stabilisce il codice penale turco.

Narratore di fama internazionale Pamuk è riconosciuto come uno degli scrittori contemporanei più tradotti, non solo nelle lingue europee. Dal suo esordio, nel 1982, infatti, ha pubblicato nove romanzi e altri scritti, insigniti di prestigiosi premi internazionali in Europa e negli Stati Uniti. Ha elaborato forme narrative originali, benché complesse e non sempre di facile interpretazioni, attraverso le quali esplora, sotto un punto di vista storico, le problematiche dell’arte, dell’espressione, dell’identità e del rapporto fra le tradizioni dell’Oriente e dell’Occidente. In patria e all’estero Pamuk riscuote un grande successo letterario. Ma nonostante ciò, egli continua ad essere osteggiato da una parte dell'opinione pubblica del suo Paese. Un sottoprefetto di Isparta ha addirittura ordinato la distruzione dei suoi romanzi nelle librerie e nelle biblioteche in tutta sua provincia.

Pamuk, invitato alla Fiera internazionale del Libro a Torino, aveva deciso di non fare cenno a questa questione. In passato egli aveva pure rifiutato di partecipare a dibattiti e discussioni sui mandanti dell'omicidio del giornalista armeno Hrant Dink, suo amico. A Torino, sollecitato sulla sua vicenda giudiziaria ancora in corso, ha commentato : “Non credo che si tratti di una questione seria, anche se non conosco ancora gli ultimi dettagli, non c’è ancora nulla di ufficiale, ma da quel che ho capito potrei essere nuovamente processato. Purtroppo nella mia nazione la giustizia è politicizzata - ha detto Pamuk - e voi sapete che se in un paese non c'è libertà non ci può essere neppure vera giustizia. Per questo sento il dovere di parlare liberamente”.

I giornali turchi per ora preferiscono tacere e solo il quotidiano Hurriyet osa accennare a questa probabile nuova apertura di processo. Nessuno dà nulla per certo e tutti mantengono il silenzio, visto quanto si è scatenato negli anni scorsi a livello internazionale proprio intorno al caso Pamuk e all’articolo 301. Molti si augurano che questo episodio non sia l'ennesimo segnale dell'irrigidimento autoritario e nazionalista in corso in Turchia da parte dell'attuale governo, un fatto che va ad aggiungersi ai recenti avvicinamenti alla Siria e all'Iran, confermando il sospetto verso un governo che, dimenticando la laicità kemalista, si dirige verso un Islam più estremista, in cui nazionalismo e fondamentalismo si fondono pericolosamente.

Autore: Geries Othman

Fonte: www.asianews.it

Armenia-Turkey: genocide, blockade, diplomacy

Wirepullers: Turchia e Armenia sarebbero sul punto di risolvere un conflitto in atto dal secolo scorso. Precisamente dal 1915-1916, biennio in cui un numero variabile tra i 950.000 e i 3.500.000 Armeni, a seconda che a dirlo sia Ankara o Yerevan, furono deportati e uccisi dall'esercito turco e da milizie curde. Il genocidio è ancora oggi una ferita aperta per Ankara, a tal punto che parlarne in pubblico può costare il carcere. Ad accelerare questo riavvicinamento tra i due paesi ha contribuito la guerra dell'anno scorso in Georgia, la quale avrebbe creato un blocco all'economia locale, costringendo gli attori dell'area a cercare nuove strade. Ed ecco quindi che viene istituita una commissione mista turco-armena, che dovrà stabilire se il genocidio ci sia veramente stato e in che misura. Come dire, se gli affari in qualche modo devono andare avanti, la storia non può essere un intralcio. Con la brutta sensazione che il gas che scalderà le nostre case tra qualche anno passerà sopra quei morti. (3)

A bad agreement cannot turn old adversaries into good neighbours, says Vicken Cheterian.

A process that began with "football diplomacy" between Armenia and Turkey has developed into the real thing, as the countries' foreign ministers signed two protocols on their future relationship at a ceremony in Switzerland on 10 October 2009. The presence of senior international dignitaries at the event - among them United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, European Union foreign-policy chief Javier Solana - reflects the geopolitical importance of the deal.

But this is but a stage in a long story, not its culmination; and the context and content of the agreement between these bitter adversaries reveal that the most serious problem between them - the genocide of the Armenians in 1915 and after - has been handled in a very bad way. This guarantees further dispute and tension, with the likelihood of ultimate breakdown.

The denial
When Turkey's president visited Yerevan to attend a World Cup qualifier between the two national football teams on 6 September 2008, I was hopeful that Turkey was seriously shifting its foreign policy in the direction of its proclaimed "zero problems" with its neighbours. In particular, I thought that Turkey would as part of a rapprochement with Armenia put an end to its sixteen-year long blockade of Armenia (imposed at the time of the post-Soviet conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh).

This expectation was overturned when I read the protocols on establishing diplomatic relations and opening borders, which were made public on 31 August 2009. My impression was that Armenia was being forced to pay a high price, both morally and politically; that the documents set a bad precedent, in allowing strong states with a dark past to revise history at the negotiation-tables, with the blessing of world powers; and that the existing international political framework seems unable as a result to accommodate the grievances carried by the descendants of genocide victims.

To understand the limits of the Armenia-Turkey accord, a brief survey of the history they fail to address is unavoidable.

The heart of the issue that divides Armenia and Turkey is the uprooting, exile and massacre of almost the entire Armenian population of the Ottoman empire during the first world war, when the powerful Young Turk leaders Enver and Talat came to the view that the empire's Armenian subjects of the empire constituted an "enemy within". Only a very few Armenians, mainly in the then capital Istanbul, survived out of a pre-genocide population of around 1.5 million.

There is copious documentation in many national archives - German, British, French, as well as Turkish and other - about what Armenians call the meds yeghern (great catastrophe). But despite this, and vast subsequent research material, the modern Turkish state continues - after ninety-four years - to deny the genocidal intention of its Ottoman predecessor. Turkey's official narrative claims by turn that the relevant events were part of a civil war, in which Armenians also were agents of massacre against "Muslims"; and that in any case the Armenians deserved whatever happened to them because they had betrayed the empire and collaborated with the Russian and Tsarist enemy. Either version is governed by denial: of the reality of genocide, of the experience of victims, of the responsibility of perpetrators.

The Turkish state has made huge investments to spread this narrative via support for publications and payment of researchers, journalists and lobbyists. Against this, Armenian diaspora organisations have been active from 1965 in lobbying to seek international recognition of the genocide. Many researchers have continued to document and deepen understanding of the tragedy; these include Turkish scholars such as Taner Akcam.

The reshuffle
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of independent Armenia in 1989-91 gave the whole affair a new dimension. Turkey recognised the Republic of Armenia, but did not establish diplomatic contacts. As the war in Nagorno-Karabakh escalated, Turkey shut down even the limited cross-border exchange (principally the Gyumri-Kars rail link) that had existed in Soviet times.

In 1993, Turkey joined Azerbaijan in imposing a blockade on Armenia in the attempt to force Yerevan to abandon its military (and political) support of the Karabakh authorities. Turkey later added two new preconditions before it would consider establishing diplomatic relations and raising the blockade: that Armenia accepted the 1921 treaty of Kars between Kemalist Turkey and Soviet Russia (which established the current state borders), and that Armenia ceased pursuing international recognition of the genocide.

The US state department acted as mediator between Ankara and Yerevan for over a decade, without result. The event that shuffled the cards in the region was the war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008. This made the opening of the Armenia-Turkey border look more attractive to both Moscow and Ankara for trade and security reasons, and fuelled Turkish diplomatic talk of "zero problems" with its neighbours. The election of Barack Obama, who during his campaign had promised to recognise the Armenian genocide, acted as a further pressure on Ankara. The status quo was starting to appear untenable.

It was in the wake of the short, vicious August 2008 war that Armenia's president (Serzh Sarkisian) invited his Turkish counterpart (Abdullah Gül) to visit Yerevan to attend the scheduled football match. This in turn ignited a chain of intensive consultations and rumours, including about an early reopening of the border. The next, and sudden, breakthrough occurred on 23 April 2009 - the eve of the day each year when Armenians commemorate the genocide - when Turkey and Armenia along with their Swiss mediators announced a "roadmap" towards normalisation.

This announcement also allowed Barack Obama in his 24 April address to use the term meds yeghern and thus avoid the juridical meaningful "genocide" - thus in effect retreating from his campaign promise. In the ensuing weeks Ankara also took a step back and insisted that the opening of borders could not take place before the solution of the Karabakh conflict - a clear concession to Azerbaijani interests. Now, with the protocols (which have to be ratified by the respective parliaments before they come into effect) Turkey can continue to press Armenia by saying that the process will be halted unless there is "progress" on the Karabakh issue.

The block
The four-page text agreed on 31 August 2009 - the basis of the 10 October accords - made reference to recognising the "existing borders": a hint in the direction of the Kars treaty. But the real disaster lies in the pledge to "implement a dialogue on the historic dimension with the aim to restore mutual confidence between the two nations, including an impartial scientific examination of the historical records and archives to define problems and formulate recommendations".

This is the equivalent of a coup d'état by diplomats and politicians over the work of historians. This is not these gentlemen's job; the best they can do is to regulate the political problems between their two states, and leave study of the historic records - opened to all - to scholars. It is a bitter twist that two days before the protocols were signed, Turkey's supreme court of appeals found that the Nobel literature laureate Orhan Pamuk can be sued for an interview given to the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger in which he said "30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians have been killed and almost nobody dares to mention that."

The Armenian foreign ministry says that the protocols do not include preconditions, especially over the main Turkish demand that opening the borders should be linked to progress over the Karabakh conflict; and that therefore the accords are a great success for them. But the protocols do refer to the Kars treaty, and satisfy Turkey's key aim of deflecting or halting the process of international recognition of the genocide. For it is all too predictable that in future Obama or his European counterparts will refrain from use of the term "genocide" on the grounds that the two sides are engaged in sensitive negotiations and thus it is better not to disturb them.

Thus, the way the protocols indirectly put the genocide on the negotiating table allows Turkey to win twice: by creating a process that deters foreign powers from intervening and putting pressure on Turkey, and by granting Turkey the formal possibility of questioning the genocide.
The leading genocide scholar Roger W Smith has written an open letter to the Armenian president, which says:

"Scholars have identified the Armenian genocide as the archetypal case of modern genocide, whose pattern has many similarities with subsequent cases. Therefore, any commission that purports now to conduct ‘an impartial scientific examination of the historical records and archives' in effect dismisses all of the extensive research that has already been conducted for decades and implies that none of it was impartial or scientific. This is offensive to all genocide scholars, but particularly non-Armenian scholars, who feel their work is now being truly politicised."

He concludes: "the scholars are concerned that a historical commission would embolden those who would consider perpetrating genocide in future years by showing how easily genocide can be relativised, especially by the powerful."

The deal of 10 October 2009 entails that several intergovernmental commissions will be assigned to study Armenian-Turkish relations in such areas as economy, trade and culture (including, for example, the fate of thousands of Armenian churches and cultural monuments in Turkey), as well as the events of 1915 and after. The two countries' diplomats will need to agree on 4,000 pages rather than just the four of the protocols. It is a recipe lacking the key ingredient: a recognition by Turkey of the dark pages of its own history.

Autore: Vicken Cheterian

Fonte: www.opendemocracy.net

Also read: http://stefanotorelli.blogsome.com/2009/10/09/turchia-e-armenia-al-bivio/

Turkey's Guilty Conscience

Wirepullers: Turchia e Armenia sarebbero sul punto di risolvere un conflitto in atto dal secolo scorso. Precisamente dal 1915-1916, biennio in cui un numero variabile tra i 950.000 e i 3.500.000 Armeni, a seconda che a dirlo sia Ankara o Yerevan, furono deportati e uccisi dall'esercito turco e da milizie curde. Il genocidio è ancora oggi una ferita aperta per Ankara, a tal punto che parlarne in pubblico può costare il carcere. Ad accelerare questo riavvicinamento tra i due paesi ha contribuito la guerra dell'anno scorso in Georgia, la quale avrebbe creato un blocco all'economia locale, costringendo gli attori dell'area a cercare nuove strade. Ed ecco quindi che viene istituita una commissione mista turco-armena, che dovrà stabilire se il genocidio ci sia veramente stato e in che misura. Come dire, se gli affari in qualche modo devono andare avanti, la storia non può essere un intralcio. Con la brutta sensazione che il gas che scalderà le nostre case tra qualche anno passerà sopra quei morti. (2)

One of the world's thorniest historical conflicts is on the verge of being solved. But long-term peace between Turkey and Armenia might be as hard to achieve as a lasting Middle East truce.

Pop quiz: Can you name one part of the world where the United States and the Russian Federation have been making common cause? Correct answer: in Turkey and Armenia, where the two powers have been collaborating of late.

And that's only one of the many remarkable twists to emerge from a diplomatic quest that, for sheer complexity and emotional explosiveness, is likely rivaled only by the search for peace in the Middle East. It has been a wild ride, and it's not over yet. Ankara and Yerevan are signing two historic agreements that could pave the way toward a major diplomatic rapprochement and an opening of the two countries' common 325-kilometer border, which has been closed for the past 16 years.

"I think we're seeing a series of high-water marks in a long process," says the International Crisis Group's Hugh Pope. "Considering where we've come from 10 years ago to where we are today, it's nothing short of amazing."

still a long way to go. Like the Israelis and Palestinians, the Turks and Armenians share a lot of history, and that's not always a good thing. As in the Middle East, the Turks and the Armenians are separated by religion, harshly felt territorial disputes, and the poisonous legacy of killing on a scale so vast that it boggles the mind. Small wonder that the two peoples have spent most of the past 100 years locked in mutual antipathy.

The issue that looms over all else is 1915's "Great Calamity," when more than 1 million overwhelmingly Orthodox Christian Armenians met their deaths at the hands of mostly Muslim Ottoman Turks during the turmoil of World War I. Armenians, and most non-Turkish historians, say it was genocide. The Turks, for their part, have long denied that it ever happened -- perhaps because admitting the massacres would cast a stain on the birth of the present-day Republic of Turkey, which was established in the aftermath of the war. A controversial Turkish law that prohibits insults to "Turkishness" has sometimes been used as a basis for prosecuting those who would dare refer to the events of 1915 as genocide.

Understandably, many Armenians have insisted that a clear Turkish acknowledgment of the 1915 massacres precede any diplomatic opening between the two countries -- and that's precisely what hasn't happened. Instead the two governments have agreed to sidestep the issue by appointing an independent historical commission to discuss it. Armen Ayvazyan, director of the Ararat Center for Strategic Research in Yerevan, speaks for many Armenian nationalists when he denounces this move as "outrageous." Imagine, he says, that an unrepentant Nazi Germany had called for a "historical commission" to debate the Holocaust. Politically, the move has also enabled the Turks to argue that countries that have been considering parliamentary resolutions officially condemning Ottoman actions in 1915 as genocide -- read "the United States" -- should postpone doing so, at risk of derailing the current rapprochement.

And yet, as Pope insists, merely denouncing the current normalization process as a sellout to an unrepentant Turkey misses a key point. He notes that, since 2000, a growing number of Turkish intellectuals have been steadily challenging the traditional taboos, openly challenging the official version that downplays the 1915 massacres as a few random atrocities rather than a systematic state-orchestrated campaign of killing. (Among the dissenters: Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk.) They've been organizing academic conferences and pushing for the publication of long-suppressed documents, such as the diaries of senior Ottoman official Talat Pasha, which clearly show his intimate involvement in the killings. Last December, a group of 200 Turks even organized a petition expressing a Turkish apology for 1915, and it's since been signed by some 30,000 people.

Given the history on both sides, one of the most surprising things about the normalization process is how much support it has managed to find. When Turkish President Abdullah Gül launched the present initiative by heading to a September 2008 soccer match in Yerevan, a poll in Turkey found that 69.6 percent approved, while some 62.8 percent thought Turkey should develop economic and political ties with Armenia. "The more they [Turks and Armenians] meet, the more they realize how similar they are," notes Diba Nigar Göksel of the European Stability Initiative, pointing out that there are already some 70,000 Armenian guest workers in Turkey. (At the same time she bemoans the lack of the myriad exchanges and contacts of the kind that have considerably enlivened relations between Turkey and Greece over the past two decades). Still, she notes, public opinion in Armenia itself predictably remains more complicated: Ask Armenians if they support opening the border, and they overwhelmingly approve; ask them if the border should be opened if Turkey doesn't acknowledge the 1915 genocide, and they overwhelmingly don't.

There's another complicating factor waiting in the wings: the status of the "frozen conflict" between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Azeris are ethnic Turks and have been viewed with corresponding suspicion by the Armenians, even when both groups were living in their own titular republics back in the old Soviet Union. In 1988, fighting broke out when the majority Armenian inhabitants of the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh inside Azerbaijan insisted on joining their brethren in Armenia proper.

The war ended in 1994 with Armenian forces in tight control of Nagorno-Karabakh and the two republics -- which became independent countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union -- locked in a state of mutual hostility that remains to this day. At first the Turkish push for normal relations with Armenia didn't make resolving the Azeri-Armenian logjam a precondition. But an outcry in Baku, as well as harsh criticism from the powerful nationalist opposition in the parliament in Ankara, forced the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an to put Nagorno-Karabakh back on the agenda -- despite apparent promises he'd made to the Armenians on that score. Lately Erdogan's government has reaffirmed that the rapprochement with Yerevan will go ahead regardless of progress on the Azeri-Armenian peace talks.

The stakes are enormous for both sides. The Turks closed their border with Armenia in 1993 as a rebuke for Armenia's seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh, and since then Armenia's only land link with the rest of the Caucasus has been through Georgia. Opening the border would give a huge boost to the Armenian economy. The Turks would benefit from vastly expanded geopolitical influence in the strategically sensitive Caucasus. Over the long term, say analysts, the Erdogan government would also be able to demonstrate much greater diplomatic credibility in its dealings with Greek Cypriots, and, beyond that, with the European Union (which maintains reservations about Turkey's human rights record and democratic bona fides). Ankara would also, potentially, be able to counter the chronic bad publicity it has received around the world for its persistent denial of the genocide -- no small thing given the enormous political traction of the Armenian diaspora in Europe and the United States.

Moscow and Washington apparently think they have something to gain, too -- even if they hold that belief "for very different reasons," Pope notes. Washington wants to see a reduction of conflict in the Caucasus that would enable energy from the region (and the neighboring countries of Central Asia) to find alternate routes to the West (a desire shared, if less assertively, by many in Brussels). Moscow, meanwhile, thinks that bringing its old ally Armenia and its new friend Turkey closer together will diminish the pull of "extraregional actors" (i.e., the Americans and the Europeans) in the Caucasus. And the fact that lifting the iron curtain between Turkey and Armenia will substantially reduce the geopolitical weight of Georgia, Moscow's declared enemy, probably contributes as well.

Yet the deal is still a long way from done. The protocols that will be presented by the two governments this month still have to be approved by the Turkish and Armenian parliaments. "The crucial point is ratification," says Sinan Ülgen of the Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies in Istanbul. "This is going to be ratified if, and only if, Azerbaijan and Armenia can come to agreement on Karabakh." And that is far from a sure thing, given the long legacy of mistrust. Laurence Broers of the London-based nonprofit Conciliation Resources points out that there are precedents from Turkish and Armenian leaders who tried to build rapprochement without sufficient backing from their own peoples -- they failed. "So I am not very optimistic."
Let's see what happens next.

Autore: Christian Caryl

Fonte: www.foreignpolicy.com

Armenia-Turchia: segnali di pace dal Caucaso

Wirepullers: Turchia e Armenia sarebbero sul punto di risolvere un conflitto in atto dal secolo scorso. Precisamente dal 1915-1916, biennio in cui un numero variabile tra i 950.000 e i 3.500.000 Armeni, a seconda che a dirlo sia Ankara o Yerevan, furono deportati e uccisi dall'esercito turco e da milizie curde. Il genocidio è ancora oggi una ferita aperta per Ankara, a tal punto che parlarne in pubblico può costare il carcere. Ad accelerare questo riavvicinamento tra i due paesi ha contribuito la guerra dell'anno scorso in Georgia, la quale avrebbe creato un blocco all'economia locale, costringendo gli attori dell'area a cercare nuove strade. Ed ecco quindi che viene istituita una commissione mista turco-armena, che dovrà stabilire se il genocidio ci sia veramente stato e in che misura. Come dire, se gli affari in qualche modo devono andare avanti, la storia non può essere un intralcio. Con la brutta sensazione che il gas che scalderà le nostre case tra qualche anno passerà sopra quei morti. (1)

A ovest riapre il confine con la Turchia, a est lancia segnali di distensione all'Azerbaigian. Lo storico accordo tra Ankara e Yerevan, le proteste dell'Azerbaigian e la questione del Nagorno-Karabakah.

Ci vorrà tempo, ma Mediterraneo e Caspio si riavvicineranno. La notizia di uno storico accordo tra Turchia e Armenia, che apre la strada alla normalizzazione e alla riapertura della frontiera tra i due paesi, aveva innervosito l'Azerbaigian, ultimo tassello della via che unisce i due mari. A Baku, infatti, non andava già che gli storici alleati turchi brindassero insieme ai nemici armeni senza affrontare la questione del Nagorno Karabakh. Nel 1993 l'Azerbaigian perse il controllo su questa regione, trasformatasi in enclave armena sotto il controllo dei soldati di Yerevan: fu allora che Ankara dimostrò la sua solidarietà ai fratelli turcofoni chiudendo le sue frontiere orientali.

E, a dispetto delle polemiche azere, i turchi dimostrano di voler ancora risolvere la questione: sul quotidiano di Istanbul Yeni Safaq, giusto all'indomani dello storico accordo tra i due vicini, sono apparse indiscrezioni sul possibile ritiro delle truppe armene dal Karabakh. Secondo il giornale, nei colloqui che hanno portato ai protocolli di riconciliazione con Ankara, Yerevan ha promesso che i suoi soldati abbandoneranno l'enclave prima della riapertura del confine.

Un passo che sarebbe epocale per l'Armenia, dove l'opinione pubblica non è decisamente disposta ad abbandonare a sé stessa una regione che la guerra e la retorica nazionalista hanno trasformato nel simbolo stesso dell'orgoglio patriottico. Per questo motivo il presidente Sargsyan temporeggia, ribattendo alle indiscrezioni apparse su Yeni Safak con dichiarazioni ambigue: qualunque soluzione riguardante l'enclave sarà basata sul consenso e la libera volontà della popolazione armena che vive lì.

Per distogliere l'attenzione dell'elettorato, Sargsyan sposta il terreno dello scontro più a nord. Più precisamente in Samtskhe-Javakheti, la regione georgiana a maggioranza armena: ai "fratelli" d'oltreconfine il presidente promette di combattere per il riconoscimento dell'idioma comune come lingua regionale ufficiale. Un'altra spina nel fianco per il governo di Tbilisi, che deve controllare un territorio sempre più diviso dalle rivendicazioni identitarie.

Mentre il sud accoglie le lusinghe di Yerevan, le due regioni separatiste settentrionali, Abkhazia e Ossezia del Sud, consolidano il loro status di repubbliche indipendenti. Dopo quello di Russia e Nicaragua, infatti, stanno per incassare il terzo riconoscimento internazionale: quello del Venezuela, annunciato da Hugo Chavez al ritorno dal red carpet di Venezia.

Autore: Cecilia Tosi

Fonte: www.limesonline.it

Also read: http://temi.repubblica.it/limes/erdogan-e-i-giannizzeri-dell%e2%80%99impero-neo-ottomano/7077