As ancient as Herodotus' Histories, the fast-flowing waters of the Aras river today trace the Turkish-Armenian border, a messy 20th century creation of broken bridges and shuttered rail tracks. In the shadow of snow-topped Mount Ararat, the river splits and narrows until it divides the verdant villages of Halikisla, on the Turkish side, and Bagaran, in Armenia. Once one, the villages are now separated by a stretch of water little wider than a double bed. Residents never meet, except to cast for trout under the watchful gaze of military guards or to return an errant cow.
Turkey and Armenia have been bitter enemies for almost a century, their tensions stemming from the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish army. Turkey has always denied that the killings constitute genocide. The two countries briefly shared an open border when an independent Armenia emerged from post-Soviet Russia in 1991, but two years later Turkey sealed the border in solidarity with Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia over the contested enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Now one of Europe's last closed frontiers may finally be reopening again. On Sept. 1, Turkey and Armenia announced a Swiss-mediated six-week negotiation period aimed at normalizing diplomatic relations. The goal is for both parliaments to ratify a deal by Oct. 14 — when the two countries are scheduled to play a World Cup soccer qualifier. The border could then reopen by the end of the year.
There is much at stake. Securing the Caucasus region, veined with oil and gas pipelines, has become a priority for both Russia and the U.S. The Obama Administration has signaled that helping to rebuild Turkish-Armenian ties is a foreign-policy priority. But history is a potent saboteur in this part of the world, and talks have collapsed before under its weight. Already hard-liners in both countries are furiously denouncing the new peace plan.
Armenian nationalists criticize their government in Yerevan for not making Turkey's recognition of the 1915 genocide a precondition for diplomatic normalization. Instead, the new plan calls for a commission of Armenian, Turkish and international experts to be established to study historical records and promote mutual dialogue.
In 1915, the Ottoman Turkish army, fighting against Russia to maintain its territories, sent the region's Armenian population, based largely in the east, on a "death march" toward Syria. Armenians say 1.5 million were killed in the genocide. But Turkey rejects the term, maintaining that the expulsion was a wartime measure necessary to quash Armenian nationalists, who sided with the Russians. Turks refer to the events as tehcir — a little-used Arabic word that means mass deportation. The recently published records of Talat Pasha, an Ottoman Turkish minister during the war, show that over the course of 1915, the Armenian population in 30 Anatolian cities decreased by 924,000 people, and in at least five eastern cities that had Armenian populations of more than 50,000, there were no Armenians left by the end of the year.
"It isn't just history from a book, it is our grandmothers," says Alexander Iskandaryan, head of the Yerevan-based Caucasus Institute. "It is part of our historical memory, and the reason why an Armenian diaspora exists." But, he adds, "that doesn't mean that the border should be closed or you shouldn't have embassies. The problems between two peoples will disappear as we continue to discuss."
According to the new plan, Turkey has also conceded ground, suspending its insistence that a solution to the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh precede any deal. Turks and Azeris are ethnic kin, and Azeri gas and oil travels to the West via Turkey. Azerbaijan scuppered diplomatic negotiations between Turkey and Armenia earlier this year by threatening to limit natural-gas supplies to Turkey if Ankara normalized relations with Armenia without a settlement on Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan quickly backed down. (Now, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is separately the focus of Moscow-driven peace talks.) This time, Turkey's two opposition parties have criticized the government for making what they say is a unilateral concession.
"Both Turkey and Armenia have taken a brave and statesmanlike step," says Hugh Pope, analyst with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. "Both will win if it succeeds." For landlocked Armenia, an open border could mean huge economic gains. Ali Guvensoy, head of the Chamber of Commerce of Kars in eastern Turkey, estimates the regional economy could grow by 20% if the border reopens, a much-needed boon for the impoverished area. "The past is in the past. We need to look to the future," he says. "There is no room for fear."
Opening the border will also help bolster Turkey's ambitions to become a regional political heavyweight. "If successful, [the talks] could win back for Turkey much of its recently faded prestige as domestic reformer, as regional peacemaker and as a country seriously pushing forward with its accession process to the European Union," says the International Crisis Group's Pope.
In Kars, which lies on the border between Turkey and Armenia, optimism is in the air. Locals recall a lively trade in cattle and livestock from Armenia and food and textiles from Turkey when the border was open. Work on renovating the cross-border rail lines is due to begin soon. And the restoration of Armenian monuments at the ancient site of Ani is proceeding apace. (See pictures of the streets of Istanbul.)
"Once trade, human interaction and dialogue begin, finding common ground on more complicated issues will become easier," says Aybars Gorgulu, analyst at the Istanbul think tank TESEV. It will take time, perhaps years, for Turkey and Armenia to overcome decades of mutual distrust. But with the announcement of new peace talks, a long-overdue healing process may have finally begun.
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