After the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s negative reaction to the wording of Armenian Constitutional Court ruling on the application of Turkish-Armenian protocols, the US Assistant Secretary of State, head of the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon said that “the court decision permits the protocols, as they were negotiated and signed, to move forward towards parliamentary ratification, and does not appear to limit or qualify them in any way.”
News.Az asked Ilgar Mammadov, Baku-based political commentator, who has been supportive of the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement by strongly welcoming the signing of Turkish-Armenian protocols in November 2009, to interpret the meaning of such controversial view of the ratification process.
According o him, Mr. Gordon is so much interested in immediate achievements at talks which his Bureau was proud of that he tends to ignore the weaknesses of the guidance his agency had provided to the Armenian partners.
“The logic of his statement is clear, although not pronounced: international agreements of a state are superior to local laws. However, if one morning Washington and Tehran sign a deal to be ratified by parliaments on the establishment of diplomatic relations and opening trade between two countries in exchange to Tehran’s refusal to enrich plutonium, and then in the evening Iranian Supreme Court prohibits Iranian citizens to engage in activities that would impede the creation of nuclear weapon, Mr. Gordon would view such a process quite differently,” said Mr. Mammadov.
Mr. Mammadov added that normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia is in the benefit of Azerbaijan despite the opposition being voiced by official Baku.
“However, the normalization should solve the problem of Armenian territorial claims and associated historical allegations against Turkey, and not give Yerevan an opportunity to reconfirm them,” he concluded.
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