Ani Dialogue kicks off in Yerevan with Turkish, Armenian participants

“It’s a good name. It has historical value, even controversial value,” said Hans-Jochen Schmidt, Germany’s ambassador to Armenia, at the Thursday opening of the Ani Dialogue, referring to Ani, which are the ruins of the medieval Armenian capital near the Arpaçay (Akhurian in Armenian) River, which makes up part of the border between Armenia and Turkey.

“The Ani bridge on the Arpaçay River could be restored with your efforts and could gain importance again,” he told the participants, who came from organizations involved in culture and heritage, education and science, human rights and democratization, and media and journalism.

Yonca Verdioğlu from the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s İstanbul office said they received hundreds of applications for the dialogue program and that they had difficulty in selecting people, as there was much sincere interest in the joint development project.

“Diplomacy has failed in restoring Turkey-Armenia relations. We have a bottom-up approach and we would like our leaders to hear our demands,” she said.

Richard Giragosian, director of the Yerevan-based Armenian Center for National and International Studies (ACNIS), said within the first year of the signing of the Zurich protocols between Turkey and Armenia, no progress has been made in ratifying them. “It’s an important demonstration that what is important is the process, not the protocols. It’s about people,” he said during an opening speech.

“We should recognize how far we have come,” he added. “Those exchanges are about interacting, not signatures, not protocols.”

The protocols signed on Oct. 10 of last year in Zurich between Turkey and Armenia in order to normalize relations and open the border have not yet been ratified, the result of mutual accusations. The border has been closed since 1993 when Turkey sided with Azerbaijan, following the Armenian armed forces’ occupation of 20 percent of Azerbaijan in 1992 — including the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Dilek Kurban, from the democratization program of the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) who gave an overall picture of the transformation process in Turkey over the past 10 years in terms of democratization, said that Turkish society had been facing its taboos.

“Various groups in society have been more demanding in regards to their rights, including Alevis, Kurds, lesbians, gays and transsexuals,” she said.

Prior to 2005, several important laws were passed regarding human rights in Turkey, but civil society was not particularly involved in the process, she added.

“After 2005, there was more talk about Turkey herself, rather than Turkey’s European Union quest — and more talk about specific policies rather than laws,” she said.

The Sept. 12 approval of the constitutional amendment package, which involved changes in the areas of human rights and freedoms as well as reforms in the judiciary, was important she said, because it was now possible to enact further reforms.

The Ani Dialogue’s participants involve such names as writer Mıgırdiç Margosyan, Bianet coordinator Ertuğrul Kürkçü, photojournalist Özcan Yurdalan, the Human Rights Foundation’s Coşkun Üsterci, the Helsinki Citizens Assembly’s Emel Kurma and researcher Alin Ozinian. There are also journalists and young people from academic and civil platforms of both countries. They are participating in workshops in their areas of specialization to develop joint projects.

Today`s Zaman