Both Ankara and Yerevan have a responsibility to the two protocols they signed five months ago that they should not forget, despite the fact that both sides have failed to ratify the agreements, because of the historic importance of the protocols, the first written documents signed by the estranged neighbors since the 1920 and 1921 Gümrü and Kars agreements established their mutual border, a senior Turkish diplomat has said.
“I see some commentators suggesting that the Turkey-Armenia normalization process is dead or that a funeral should be held for the burial of the protocols.
We consider these comments as literary and romantic affectations,” the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said earlier this week, referring to comments in the wake of a US House committee’s adoption of a resolution recognizing atrocities against Anatolian Armenians under Ottoman rule during World War I as genocide last week.
“Yet, the normalization process has by no means died. Ever since the protocols were signed between Turkey and Armenia, the normalization process has continued along its natural course,” the diplomat said, while noting that third-party interventions such as the US vote have a strong potential to have a deleterious impact on this natural process.
The US resolution, which Ankara expects will not reach the House floor, and the normalization process “must” definitely be dealt with as two separate processes which are independent from each other, he stressed.
Ankara and Yerevan announced on April 22, 2009, that they had reached an agreement on a road map to normalize their relations. The road map was the outcome of closed-door talks that had been held for more than a year through the mediation of Switzerland on ways to restore diplomatic relations and open their mutual border. At the time, Ankara and Yerevan had stated that “the two parties have achieved tangible progress and mutual understanding in this process and they have agreed on a comprehensive framework for the normalization of their bilateral relations.”
Overcoming painful ups and downs -- particularly stemming from uneasiness over Azerbaijan -- the two countries took a landmark step when Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian signed two protocols in Zurich on Oct. 10 -- the “Protocol on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations” and the “Protocol on the Development of Bilateral Relations.”
However, the process hit a rocky patch in January after an Armenian court upheld the legality of the protocols but underlined that they could not contradict Yerevan’s official position that the alleged Armenian genocide must be internationally recognized.
Turkey accused Yerevan of trying to set conditions on the deals. Armenia’s president and foreign minister have warned that the rapprochement is under threat of collapse.
“The Jan. 12 ruling by the Armenian Constitutional Court prompted Turkey to question whether Armenians will remain committed to their promises on the protocols,” the same diplomat explained. “That reasoning behind the ruling is actually a political declaration under the guise of a legal decision. We would like the trauma created with this decision to be removed. Then we can turn back to the status quo concerning the normalization process, which has been crippled since Jan. 12.”
Ankara says a new finding assuring that the protocols are valid is needed and that this may either be a written document or an assurance by a third party that is acceptable to both the Armenian and Turkish sides.
The normalization process has also been crippled by Turkey’s insistence on parallel progress on the Nagorno-Karabakh territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The diplomat said Armenia’s irreconcilable attitude concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute during talks hosted by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Sochi, Russia, on Jan. 25 was annoying for Ankara and indicated that the three co-chairs of the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) appeared to be on the same page as Turkey that the stalemate in the South Caucasus stems from Armenia’s approach. The Minsk Group has striven to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, a territorial dispute between Baku and Yerevan, for more than 17 years.
Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan, meanwhile, has threatened to withdraw his signature from the protocols if “Turkey uses this process for different purposes.” In an interview with the French daily Le Figaro, he said Turkey has been putting forward the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue as a precondition to the protocols, the Anatolia news agency reported on Thursday.
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