A former Armenian foreign minister shares the widespread view that Turkey will not ratify the Armenian protocols without progress on Karabakh.

“The normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations is closely linked to the resolution of the Karabakh conflict or to the achievement of progress in Turkey’s interest,” Alexander Arzumanyan, who was foreign minister in Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s government, told reporters on Thursday.

He said that Turkey did not intend to ratify the protocols because immediately after signing the documents the Turkish leadership had started to bind the Armenian-Turkish process to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.

The political scientist said that Turkey will use every opportunity and pretext not to ratify the documents.

“The statement of the Turkish Foreign Ministry that the decision of Armenia’s Constitutional Court does not comply with the content of the protocols is a suitable, and at the same time, absurd pretext,” Arzumanyan said.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday that the Armenian court ruling “contains preconditions and restrictive provisions which impair the letter and spirit of the Protocols.”

Arzumanyan went on to describe Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian and his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu as talking like chickens in their phone conversation to discuss the Turkish statement.

“The Armenian foreign minister’s telephone conversation with his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoghlu is the conversation of two roosters,” he told the press conference. “Nalbandian says that he phoned Davutoglu and put him down while the Turkish foreign minister, in turn, boasts about something else. But in reality, no-one but the main characters know the details of the telephone call.”