By Tatevik Grigorian London In his recent lecture at King’s College London, HE Ahmet Davutoglu addressed the issue of Turkey’s potential membership in the European Union and its particularly thriving relationship with Britain. In a presentation entitled ‘Converging Interests of Turkey & the UK in an Enlarged EU & Beyond’, Dr. Davutoglu addressed a number if issues Turkey currently faces, among others the Cyprus issue and the newly established relationship with Armenia. Dr. Davutoglu assured his audience that in the past 7 years Turkey had greatly improved its relations with all its neighours. It had abolished the visa regime with 8 of its neighbours, it offered new proposals for resolving the Cyprus question and it has signed protocols with Armenia to normalise relations. The lecture was followed by a question and answer session, where Dr. Davutoglu answered merely 3 questions from the audience with tens of enthusiastic hands waving for the right to speak. Among the lucky three was the representative of the Forum of Armenian Associations of Europe, Ms Tatevik Grigorian who addressed two questions to Dr. Davutoglu. The first question referred to the improvement of relations with Turkey’s neighbours, in particular with Armenia. Ms. Grigorian asked whether the Turkish Parliament was prepared to ratify the protocols without any preconditions and thus honour the original agreement. In her second question, Ms Grigorian asked Dr. Davutoglu whether he believed that Turkey was ready to join the EU and uphold the same standard of human rights, such as the right to freedom of expression, when Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code simply makes this impossible. She drew the audience’s attention to the high-profile case of the nobel prize author Orhan Pamuk, who was tried for vaguely mentioning the Armenian Genocide in an interview. Would Turkey abolish Article 301? Dr. Davutoglu answered the second question first, gently mocking Ms Grigorian to ‘update her knowledge’ and suggesting that she was unaware that Article 301 had been abolished three years ago. Whilst he was right to state that Orhan Pamuk’s case was dropped in the end, it is not true that Article 301 has been abolished. It is in fact still in use, but with amendments since April 30, 2008, which lower the maximum sentence from three years to two; require the approval of the Minister o Justice, etc. But the fact remains that Article 301 has not been abolished, yet the Minister suggested that it had been and thus brushed off the question, moving onto the other. In response to the former question, Dr. Davutoglu emphasised that what Armenia calls ‘preconditions’ are not in fact preconditions and should not be viewed that way. He explained that in order for the peace to be sustainable in the South Caucasus, it was simply impossible to improve relations with Armenia before Armenia returned ‘righteously Azeri land to Azerbaijan’. He stated that 20% of Azeri land was under Armenian military control so how could there be talks of normalised relations if this was still the case? How could he possibly convince his ministers in the Parliament to ratify the protocols under these conditions? Dr. Davutoglu concluded by saying that he dreamt that one day one could safely drive all the way from Baku through Karabagh, Yerevan, Nakhichevan, down to Kars. He assured the audience that this would happen. Only not under the current conditions. But let’s not tall these ‘preconditions’.

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