IN THE NEGOTIATING ROOM AND OUT OF IT
HAKOB BADALYAN
LRAGIR.AM
11:21:49 – 28/04/2009
A very interesting situation is created in the Armenian and
Turkish relations. The Armenian government is trying to persuade
its citizens of being right. And, the there is no precondition for
the normalization of the Armenian and Turkish relations, but the
great part of the society, reading and watching the governmental
media which is overwhelmed with references to the Turkish sources,
seems to believe more the statements of the Turkish government,
which state that until the Nagorno-Karabakh issue is not settled,
the Armenian and Turkish border will not be open.
In theory, it could not be ruled out that the Armenian and
Turkish negotiations do not have any precondition. Perhaps, Turkey
negotiates with Armenia without any precondition, then, going out of
the negotiating room, it announces that unless the Nagorno-Karabakh
issue is settled, it will not open its border. Naturally, it becomes
more interesting to know what Turkey does in the negotiating room,
when it stays alone with the Armenian government, or the U.S., Russia
or Switzerland are also present there.
No one knows. Why the Armenian government does not make this
circumstance public is not known either.
Consequently, either no one tells anything in the room, or Turkey says
what it states while coming out of the negotiating room, which is the
reason why the Armenian government does not want to make it public
and goes on stating that there is no question of precondition. In
other words, either nothing is spoken about in the negotiating room,
or what is spoken out of it, is spoken inside it too. Subsequently,
there is a precondition.
But, let us not forget that the Armenian government says that there
is no precondition. However, an essential question occurs: what is
there? What the negotiating process includes. It is not enough to state
"don’t believe" or "believe us" for persuading the public, moreover,
when it does such a government which was formed as a result of such
an election and of a post electoral situation which took place in
February and March 2008.
If the Armenian government does not voice its version of the Armenian
and Turkish negotiations, the society is natural to believe to the
other side which speaks of some version and which is the Turkish
one. The same goes for the Nagorno-Karabakh question. Only the
Azerbaijani party voices any version of the settlement of the conflict,
as well as the co-chairs and Armenia only says "do not believe",
"believe us".
But nothing precise is said. Why it is not stated at least something
which would make pleasure to the public. The point is not that the
sweet lie is better than the bitter truth. But the point is that
the Armenian and Turkish negotiations are not conducted around the
negotiating tables but on the level of public statements.
The negotiating rooms serve only for the statements out of them. That
is why it brings more pleasurable to hear Serge Sargsyan’s statements
that due to the wrong calculation Armenian may leave the negotiating
process, very surprisingly become stronger than the statement which
calls to believe them, that there are no preconditions. At least, the
only exact thought of the Armenian government during the whole period
of the negotiations, almost one year, was that if its calculations
come out to be wrong Armenia will give up the negotiations. The rest
of the precise thoughts, unfortunately, were authored by Turkey.