In 2009, Southern California Armenians numbering in tens of thousands protested the Turkey-Armenia Protocols during President Sarkisian’s visit to Los Angeles
BY ARA KHACHATOURIAN
President Serzh Sarkisian’s announcement Thursday declaring the Turkey-Armenia Protocols null and void is not cause for celebration, but rather yet another opportunity to assert that the entire process that began in June 2008 was categorically wrong and compromised the entire Armenian Nation, as well as the national security of Armenia.
While the narrative woven by Yerevan has been that Armenia initiated the dangerous process as a means to advance peace in the region, the fact of the matter is that the process began during the George W. Bush administration whose secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, sought to replace the failed Turkey-Armenia Reconciliation Commission with this abhorrent effort to neutralize the just demands of the Armenian people to attain international recognition of the Armenian Genocide and shield its long-time ally Turkey from any reparations claims from Armenia and Armenians.
In June of 2008, the then newly-elected Sarkisian kicked off what would later become known as “football (soccer) diplomacy) and later traveled to Ankara to begin this process. It was later revealed that secret negotiations, initiated by the U.S., had been taking place well in advance of Sarkisian’s trip to Ankara. After President Barack Obama took office, his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, rabidly embraced this effort and stopped at nothing to advance the cause of Turkey-Armenia reconciliation, with no preconditions. However, one of the provisions of the Protocols was that a commission of historians would come together to assess the issue of the Armenian Genocide.
Sarkisian probably believed that the head-on engagement in this process would deflect (international) attention from his post-election obstacles, namely the voter unrest that resulted in the death of 10 people in Yerevan on March 1, 2008 (note the date of the Protocols’ nullification).
However, there was national consensus at the time that the Protocols were wrong and it didn’t take long for the masses in Armenia and the Diaspora to rise up and demand from the Armenian government to cease all efforts to advance this dangerous process. At one point, more than 60,000 people took to the streets of Yerevan to protest the government actions on this matter. In every community in the Diaspora, the president was confronted with angry demonstrators who asserted that the Protocols went counter to the national aspirations of the Armenian people.
The Armenian Revolutionary Federation took the lead in this opposition movement and even withdrew from the government coalition, with all of its regional entities advancing the same movement in Diaspora communities.
AYF members staged a silent sit-in/hunger strike to protest the Protocols in 2009
The Turkey-Armenia Protocols were especially deemed egregious by the youth, whose presence at the forefront of this effort signaled that the new generation of Armenians would not relent in the pursuit of justice and human rights when it came to the Armenian Genocide.
“I think that he [Sarkisian] must finally sober up and refuse to sign them [Protocols] just because of his own interests,â€
