AzerNews Weekly, Azerbaijan
Dec 4 2009

Approval of Turkey deal `hinges on Armenian pullout’

04-12-2009 06:47:12

The spokesman of the Turkish parliament’s foreign affairs comittee
has said parliamentary approval of the agreement on normalizing
strained relations with Armenia, signed in October, depends on the
withdrawal of Armenian troops from the seven occupied Azerbaijani
districts.
The remarks by Suat Kiniklioglu came during his debate with Igen
Sarkisian, the senior aide to the Armenian president.
Armenia and Turkey have been at odds and the border between the two
countries has been closed since 1993 due to Armenia’s policy of
occupation and genocide claims. On October 10, two protocols — which
ultimately seek to open the Turkish-Armenian border ` were signed.
However, the documents require parliamentary approval, and Ankara has
repeatedly pledged that the border will not open until a fair solution
is found to Azerbaijan’s conflict with Armenia, which has been
occupying over 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s internationally-recognized
territory since the early 1990s.
Kiniklioglu said the process of Turkey-Armenia rapprochement has a
potential to drastically change the situation in the turbulent South
Caucasus region, emphasizing that `endeavoring to normalize ties on
one side of the region, while maintaining a conflict on the other is
incomprehensible and illogical.’ He said ratification of the
Turkish-Armenian protocols is a very `delicate’ issue and will take a
long time. Kiniklioglu added that speculating on the timeframe for
ratifying the reconciliation papers would be wrong and could hurt the
normalization process.
Sarkisian, for his part, claimed the Upper Garabagh conflict was not
reflected in the Ankara-Yerevan protocols. He further suggested that
the documents be ratified in the Turkish parliament by the end of
January, alleging that, otherwise, the process of normalizing
bilateral relations could fail.
`We will either continue our dialog without mixing the Garabagh issue
or end it. We don’t want to be used for the sake of other policies.’
The debate between Kiniklioglu and Sarkisian, entitled `Turkey and
Armenia: the road ahead’, was organized by Germany’s Marshall
Foundation in Brussels, Turkey’s Ankara news agency reported.*