There is no certainty regarding when Turkey and Armenia will open their border and establish full diplomatic relations, but unofficial efforts at strengthening ties between the two communities should continue, observers from both sides said as they convened for a policy debate in İstanbul on Thursday.
Presenting Turkey’s foreign policy approach on the issue, Joost Lagendijk, senior adviser at the İstanbul Policy Center at Sabancı University, said Turkey was not able to deliver results even though it had good intentions.
“The Turkish government has good intentions, but decisions have not been able to be implemented,” he said on Thursday afternoon in a panel discussion on “Turkey-Armenia Policy Discussions” at Kültür University.
He was referring to the stalled process of official dialogue between Turkey and Armenia after the signing of the protocols in October 2009 in Zurich, calling for the re-opening of their closed border and re-establishing diplomatic relations.
Turkey had closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in solidarity with Azerbaijan after the Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan in 1992, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
“The signing of the protocols made sense for both Turkey and Armenia,” Lagendijk said. “But one week after that, Prime Minister [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] made a link to the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh. That is a return to the old Turkish foreign policy.” Former Armenian Ambassador David Hovhannisyan, who shared the panel with Lagendijk, said that the suspension of the protocols was unfounded.
“They are suspended but for what? There are references to the issues of genocide and the Nagorno-Karabakh, which are not in the protocols,” he said. After months of frantic diplomacy, the two countries took a significant step forward on Oct. 10 last year when Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian signed protocols in Zurich to improve relations. The protocols do not refer to “genocide” but call for the establishment of a commission of historians to examine the events of the past. The protocols do not make any reference to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, either, but say that both countries should have the protocols ratified in their parliaments within a “reasonable time frame.” Like Lagendijk, Hovhannisyan said that the best thing to do at the moment is to continue efforts to strengthen ties between the Turkish and Armenian communities.
But Hovhannisyan added that their societies would not be able to go forward even on that front if they do not evaluate their past and find “common values.” Most of the participants agreed that decision-makers were coming behind the civil society and said that the states are not prepared to catch up with the public stance.
They also said that the protocols, although they are shelved at the moment, should not be abandoned altogether as they represent the best progress obtained so far as a result of the official dialogue.
Today’s Zaman
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