Interview with Richard Giragosian, director of the Armenian Centre for National and International Studies.
Q: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan met in Washington. Will the meeting affect the Turkish government’s position on rapprochement with Armenia?
A: Although it is still too early to fully evaluate the recent meeting between the Turkish prime minister and Armenian president, there are some positive signs that the process of delicate diplomacy between the two countries remains ongoing. Despite the lack of specific information, with all sides waiting until after 24 April before releasing any details, the meetings seem to have overcome the deadlock over the stalled ’protocols’ between Armenia and Turkey.
Interestingly, the recent meetings were actually not about the protocols and were not focused on the ratification of the protocols. Rather, the meetings concentrated on finding a way to overcome or even bypass the deadlocked protocols. In other words, this was an effort not to ratify the protocols but to move forward and to discuss the implementation of the terms of the protocols.
Q: Is any action expected from the Armenian side?
A: Yes and no. On the one hand, Armenia is now committed to staying engaged in the process with no real threat that Armenia will pull out or withdraw its signature form the October 2009 protocols, as they have threatened to do in recent months. But at the same time, the burden and expectations remain on Turkey, not Armenia. In many ways, Armenia has done all it could and all it should regarding this process of engagement and diplomacy with Turkey.
Q: Can the Washington meetings be described as successful in terms of Karabakh? How will they influence the conflict settlement and what changes can be expected?
A: Obviously, the fact that Azerbaijan was not invited to the Nuclear Security Summit was significant. It seems that despite the logic and need to have Azerbaijan, as a neighbour of Iran, at the summit, the decision was that it was more important to prevent Azerbaijan from any chance of disrupting the meetings between Turkey and Armenia. A related fact is that the US side only reaffirmed its position that Nagorno-Karabakh should not be a precondition or have any direct link to the Armenian-Turkish diplomatic process.
Q: Do you think the United States is sincerely interested in the complete settlement of the Karabakh conflict?
A: Again, to be honest, yes and no. The strategic necessity of resolving the Karabakh conflict is, of course, a US goal. For the US it is key, as the last ’frozen’ conflict in the region, to ensuring lasting stability and security in the South Caucasus. But the priority now is Armenian-Turkish engagement, which seems more realistic and somewhat easier and has the potential to help the related process of mediating the Karabakh conflict.
Q: What do you expect from US President Obama’s traditional speech on 24 April, marked by the Armenian community as Genocide Memorial Day?
A: In light of the recent meetings, and the US role in brokering the talks, I do not expect that President Obama will choose to use the ’genocide’ word in his annual message on 24 April. But I do think that he has made it quite clear that his choice to refraining from using the genocide word, last year or this year, does not necessarily mean that he has changed his position on the “Armenian genocide.”
Instead, I believe that he sees that the delicate window of opportunity for Armenia and Turkey, both last year and now, as too significant to possibly disrupt by invoking the term. But he may use the issue as leverage against Turkey at some later point if the Turkish side fails to meet its expectations for a breakthrough with Armenia.
In this way, the genocide issue may be used as a penalty for Turkey, if Ankara misses this historic opportunity to normalize relations with Armenia. And although in this context, the “Armenian genocide” issue is related to US-Turkish relations as well as Armenian-Turkish diplomacy, it is in no way linked or related to either US relations with Azerbaijan or with the Karabakh conflict.
News.Az
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