Heavenly Homelands

25/07/2005 Ara GALOYAN

Armenian-Turkish, better yet, Turkish-Armenian economic ties have never
been analyzed from a non-political view. The economic ties of
developing and aided countries are primarily looked at from the
historic/political point of view. Besides the evident reasons, there is
one other reason. The outlooks and professional point of views of both
our political figures and the unemployed have been shaped by the
Communist press which has been involved in politics and economics. Any
suggestion made about looking at economy and economical ties from a
non-political view is rejected. But there are no economic ties at all.
In order for there to be economic ties, the private, social and state
capitals play a major role. The fact that we do not want to accept that
is a totally different story. Since 1999, the National Statistics
Service of Armenia has been informing the public of the economic
relations that Armenia has with other countries. Statistics show that
Armenia and Turkey have been doing good business together. During the
past five years, Armenian businessmen have been exporting
$1,100,000-1.5 million dollars worth of goods to Turkey. We are mainly
exporting leather (primarily as a raw material). The factories
exporting leather who have close ties with the authorities have always
persuaded the authorities in passing a law about the customs tax for
exporting leather. There are calculations (in business terms-business
plans), according to which local production might fully waste the local
leather production. But it is evident that the lobbying of exporters is
more influential and the authorities are not taking any steps toward
this. Official statistics state that every year, $35-40.5 million
dollars of products are imported from Turkey. The imported products are
mainly food, electrical equipment, construction materials and paper.
Many Armenian products are wrapped with Turkish paper and cardboards.
It is kind of strange to see raisins and dried apricot being imported
from Turkey and not because our raisins and apricots are delicious (if
we go along with the “Ours is something else” principle). One has to be
pretty tactic in not differing the grapes and other fruits growing on
the right side of the Arax river with the ones on the left side. What’s
difficult to understand is how the villager living in Armenia always
manages to gather so much harvest (agriculture has become the leading
form of economy in Armenia for a while), while the farmers cultivating
the products are not able to sell the raisins and dried fruit at low
prices. As a result, the pastry shops prefer getting raisin and dried
fruit imports from Turkey. This is strictly tied with economy and
blaming the producers in trying to get a profit out of all this is
something like nationalism. Meanwhile, many producers hide the fact
that they are collaborating with Turkey. This is the private capital
invested in Turkey’s economy. During the past couple of years, the
national/societal and state capital has been involved in this also. It
all started with the construction projects. The All-Armenian Fund
widened its spectrum of investments in the earthquake zone. Whoever has
seen the buildings constructed by the fund can assure that all the
buildings are nicely built for the residents. There are faucets,
bathrooms, shower rooms and the bathrooms are tiled. The fund suggests
doing construction projects on homes by providing the above mentioned
conditions. This is a good thing. However, one thing that we must state
is that those faucets, the tiles, the paints used for painting the
rooms, the varnishing paint and other construction materials are all
imported from Turkey. If the All-Armenian Fund requires the use of
construction matierals from Spain, Italy or Germany, then it will be
forced to pay more and since the fund has limited resources, this means
that there can not be much construction done. The people who go along
with this idea should take the time and visit one of the small homes in
the earthquake zone. Of course, there is an alternative; to use
non-Turkish products and pay less for construction materials and
furnishings (for example, Iranian). However, cheaper means low quality
and the resident receiving the apartment will be forced to buy and
install the same faucets, switches, etc. So, it turns out that all the
economic ties are putting barriers on our lives both as a nation and a
society. On one hand, we, the patriotic nation that we are, call on
Diasporan Armenians to collect some money and send it to Armenia and on
the other hand we are taking that money and investing it into Turkey’s
economy. It is through that means by which Turkey receives one part of
the amount from Armenia’s state budget for construction projects. There
is nothing extraordinary about this if we look at it from the economic
management point of view. What is unusual is that all this is going on
within the framework of the Armenian National Assembly’s active
political strategies and the political announcements. It is pretty
difficult to give a total analysis on the Turkish-Armenian economic
relations because those relations go through negotiations. According to
experts, the products imported from Turkey are worth more than $35-40
million dollars. The negotiator here is Georgia. This means that one
part of the Armenian consumer’s price belongs to Georgia and this has
nothing to do with the fact that we have extra money. The reason for
this is that we are politicizing economy and that is what our political
figures love doing the most. Nationalism plays no major role here.
Perhaps the reason for this is that the political/economic field can be
compared to the violin being mixed up with the drum and dhol.