Haykakan Zhamanak , Armenia
May 27 2009

Tough message from Baku

Yesterday Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was in Azerbaijan
on an official visit.

At a meeting with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, the
Karabakh conflict and Armenian-Turkish relation normalization issues
were discussed. After the Davutoglu-Mammadyarov meeting, a joint press
conference took place at which the Turkish minister sent a tough
message to the Yerevan government using the language of an ultimatum.
The occupied territories of Azerbaijan should be liberated. This is
Turkey’s message to Armenia. Let Armenia stop staging a farce in the
region, Davutoglu stressed and added: I want to assure our Azerbaijani
brothers that the Nagornyy Karabakh problem and the return of occupied
territories are very important for Turkey and nobody should doubt
this. We are looking into Azerbaijan’s future in the same way we look
into Turkey’s future.

At the same time the minister mentioned that Turkey did not want the
existence of frozen conflicts in the region. International
organizations and developed countries of the world – the USA, Russia,
France and Turkey – should boost efforts to settle the issue. Turkey
will continue its efforts in that direction. Armenia should stop the
occupation. Azerbaijani territories should be returned based on the UN
resolutions, he stressed and repeated that they would not open borders
with Armenia before that condition was met. In that regard the Turkish
high-ranking official attached great importance to the upcoming
meeting between [Armenian President] Serzh Sargsyan and [Azerbaijani
President] Ilham Aliyev to be held on the sidelines of the
International Economic Forum on 4-6 June in St Petersburg. He
mentioned: We should not miss that historical moment.

Actually, after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s
statement made on 13 May in Baku, the Ankara government, this time in
the person of its foreign minister, announces for a second time that
Armenian-Turkish relations will not be regulated and that the border
will not open until Armenian troops vacate Nagornyy Karabakh and
adjacent territories. This, in fact, represents the abrupt toughening
of Ankara’s position in regard to the Nagornyy Karabakh issue. Whereas
earlier Turkey put forth the return of adjacent territories as a
precondition for establishing relations with Armenia and opening the
border, and they linked the opening of the border to the Nagornyy
Karabakh issue settlement without mentioning ways of its regulation.

Today, Ankara is putting forward a clear-cut condition to Yerevan:
withdraw troops from both Nagornyy Karabakh and adjacent territories,
otherwise Yerevan has to forget about the border opening. Davutoglu’s
speech is obviously demonstrating that Ankara wants to get actively
involved in the conflict settlement process and therefore wants to
take the advantage of the fact that Turkey is currently a temporary
member of the UN Security Council. It is not by chance that he
(Davutoglu) is expressing his dissatisfaction with the activity of the
OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs. This proves that Turkey intends to have a
role in the Nagornyy Karabakh issue settlement. The Turkish foreign
minister is actually sending this tough message right before the
Sargsyan-Aliyev meeting in St Petersburg with the intention to make
Yerevan more prone to concessions at the forthcoming meeting. In
general, very suspicious statements are being heard from Baku on the
eve of the St Petersburg meeting. And this gives grounds to conclude
that the Armenian side will be forced to make serious concessions in
St Petersburg.

A couple of days ago, Elmar Mammadyarov announced that Armenia was
having a negative impact on the peaceful settlement of the Karabakh
issue. In the process of peaceful settlement we have had many
achievements together with the previous Armenian president. But we
have achieved nothing with the incumbent one. As a person conducting
negotiations I cannot boast any progress. The new US administration
has started to influence on the regional process through the OSCE
Minsk Group and other countries. But because of the new Armenian
president, we have not made any step forward, Mammadyarov
said. Despite the above-stated fact, the OSCE [Minsk Group] co-chairs
have stressed on numerous occasions that it is easier for Sargsyan and
Aliyev to find common ground than it was for [former Armenian
President Robert] Kocharyan and Aliyev. So, Mammadyarov tries to
convince us that Kocharyan made concessions and Sargsyan is not. But
Mammadyarov by this declarations helps Serzh Sargsyan to protect
himself from the criticism and accusation inside Armenia. Hence, we
can conclude that Azerbaijan makes a diplomatic move to disguise the
expected concessions to be done by the Armenian side. We cannot but
rule out that Sargsyan made concessions in Prague too and in fact
Armenia did not toughen its position. Merely by toughening wording
they (Armenians) made attempts to conceal the fact of concessions.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress