.gu�!�="justify">I read Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian's Feb. 7 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, entitled "Turkey misses its chance with Armenia," with great interest. It is indeed another magnificent example of distortion and of what I have actually been complaining about in my analyses of the subject in question.

What Oskanian is obviously interested in is not sincere dialogue. Rather, he wants to exploit every single event in the "other" to prove himself right, particularly in the eyes of irrelevant third parties, without looking, as we put it in Turkish, at how things are in his own backyard.

Let's clarify what I mean within the framework of Oskanian's own arguments.

"Ankara has let a rare moment pass," wrote Oskanian. It appears "the Turkish authorities have grasped neither the message of Hrant's life nor the significance of his death." Subsequent to Dink's assassination last month, people in Armenia believed, "the outpouring of public grief would create a crack in the Turkish wall of denial and rejection." Actually, Dink knew "that if the authorities would just allow people to reflect and reason aloud, share questions and search for answers, everything would fall into place." Eventually, "through public and private discourse, Turks would arrive at genocide recognition themselves." The Turkish authorities, in turn, "continue to defend Article 301, the notorious 'insulting Turkishness' statute used to prosecute even novelists who depict characters questioning Ankara's official line on the genocide." In such an atmosphere, the Turks "can neither know their past nor forge their future."

What the Turkish authorities have supposedly also failed to do is initiate a radical shift in the policies that sustain today's dead-end situation between both countries. People in Armenia, Oskanian wrote, assumed that Dink's assassination would finally enable both sides to arrive at an El Dorado-like rapprochement, "one which is not a precondition for the other." Moreover, "the hermetically closed border," a phenomenon which reinforces animosities between the two peoples, would eventually be opened. The Turkish authorities, however, still stubbornly insist "on maintaining the last closed border in Europe as a tool to exert pressure on Armenia, to make its foreign policy more pliant, to punish Armenians for defending their rights and not renouncing their past."

Actually, the first part of Oskanian's arguments is little different from what is assumed in the West as well. It is based on an extremely naive and misleading portrait of an authoritarian state in Turkey, a kind of Orwellian big brother, preventing the Turkish people from doing what they are normally expected to do. And it is precisely for this reason that Oskanian maintained, "If Turkey can't seize the moment, it should not be surprised when others do."

Let's assume that this line of thinking is indeed correct. But what about Armenia? At a time when the Turkish people are widely believed to be suffering from a state of suppression, how is the situation there, in the "backyard" of our Armenian friends? Can the Armenian people know their past and forge their future?

The first enigma of grave importance we have to elaborate on in this respect is the extent of democracy in Armenia.

In the spring of last year, Professor Richard G. Hovannisian, a renowned American academic of Armenian descent and a zealous supporter of the Armenian genocide claims, is reported to have argued that Armenia is a less democratic state than Turkey. "We would have loved to see freedom of speech and thought in Armenia, instead of repression, secret police persecution and lies spread by the state media," he then added. I'm not sure whether this attracted any public attention at the time. But I guess it hasn't, because just recently I read another declaration, this time however on the Internet, by Armenian intellectuals who have been subjected to political persecution in post-Soviet Armenia.

"Armenia is one of those post-Soviet independent republics where tyranny keeps hardening, tending to transform into dictatorship," reads this declaration. "Over the past few years the Armenian mass media has been actively covering issues related to foreign writers who speak against existing taboos in their countries, especially Turkey. Unfortunately, with negligent but respectful exceptions, the intellectuals who try to overcome taboos in the Armenian reality are neglected altogether. Such hypocrisy is acquiescence to the persecution of writers and a case of complicity with the junta." More importantly, the Armenian intellectuals warn that they are "concerned with the attitude of certain political organizations towards those who practice free speech and generate new ideas in the Armenian reality."

Given this backdrop, there is nothing left but to ask Mr. Oskanian whether these accusations sound familiar to him. Whether they resemble those that he vividly exploits to accuse Turkey and the Turkish authorities… Whether the beloved Armenian people today are able to know their past and forge their future… Whether, under the current circumstances, our Armenian friends are indeed able to reconcile themselves with their past, or if have they been forced into a state of denial and blindly convincing themselves they are only victims without any guilt… Whether relations with Turkey are healthily discussed among the Armenian public…

Yes, the settlement of the Armenian-Turkish dispute is indeed imperative. However, any resolution should be based on ethics but not politics with cunning motives. There is an urgent need for empathy, but the parliamentary resolutions our Armenian friends like Oskanian are keen on will merely justify respective standpoints, further closing doors to dialogue. And distorting the facts will eventually backfire on those responsible for their fabrication.

And finally, a few words on Oskanian's second area of argument, revolving around the border issue: Oskanian claims that the border is used by Turkey as an effective tool to exert pressure on Armenia. A brilliant example of distortion! The exact reason Turkey keeps the border closed is the occupation of Azeri territories by Armenia. I am frequently asked why Turkey insists on supporting Azerbaijan and why Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh are mortgaging Turkey's policy options. Wouldn't it be more realistic to open the borders with Armenia, at a time when Turkey is aspiring to become a member of the European Union? I encounter such questions very frequently, but find them rather naive. It's like asking the U.S. why it supports Israel. Each time when this question is posed to me by somebody from the West, I respond that precisely for the same reason that the West supports Armenia against Turkey, Turkey supports and will support Azerbaijan against Armenia.

Has anyone from those Western circles which consistently exert pressure on Turkey to open its borders with Armenia, on the other hand, ever seen the miserable living conditions of the gackins, the Azeri refugees from Armenian-occupied lands, for the last 15 years? If this is indeed a pure matter of ethics, especially for those in the European Parliament or the U.S. Congress, why don't you show the same sensitivity? Why don't you help the Armenian public foster conditions in which taboos such as the "occupation" or "Greater Armenia" can be discussed freely? Why don't you help the Armenian intellectuals as well?

Reconciliation doesn't and shouldn't mean alienation! For me, at least, it will never be…