Vercihan Ziflioğlu – Hurriyet Daily News
Protocols signed between Turkey and Armenia in 2009 to normalize relations between the two countries were recently counted as null and void after Parliament failed to approve them during its 23rd term. Armenia also suspended the protocols one year after they were signed because they were not carried out.
“[Turkey’s] aim was obvious from the get-go. The purpose was merely to attract attention from the international community,” Hagop Çakıryan, an expert on Turkey and a columnist for the Armenian daily Azg, told the Hürriyet Daily News.
Turkey knew all too well that the protocols were not going to be enacted even as officials were signing them in 2009, Çakıryan said, adding that their recent nullification by Parliament sheltered no surprises. Turkey had been propounding pre-conditions to establish relations with Armenia on each occasion, he added.
“Turkey expected Armenia to forget the genocide, to hand Karabakh over to Azerbaijan and to act as a mediator with the diaspora to get them to halt their campaign for the recognition of the genocide by the international community, but this failed to materialize. Similar pre-conditions were set forth before Armenia while the protocols were being signed, even though Erdoğan’s government had said there would be no pre-conditions,” Çakıryan said.
“It is no surprise that Parliament counted the protocols as null and void, but this bears a symbolic significance,” Professor Ruben Safrastyan, director of the Institute of Oriental Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, told the Daily News.
“Turkish officials have once again highlighted very clearly that they do not care about relations with Armenia and that they have lost their enthusiasm. Turkey wants to have a say in the Middle East, and therefore it has locked onto the Middle East,” Safrastyan said. The issue of relations with Armenia could once again climb back onto the agenda on April 24, which is regarded as the anniversary of the tragic events of 1915, but this would constitute an artificial agenda, he added. “To cut to the chase, Turkey does not want relations with Armenia to be normalized,” he added.
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