Turkey To Pay 150 Percent More, $300 For Azerbaijani Natural Gas

Today’s Zaman
Feb 8 2010
Turkey

If efforts by Ankara and Yerevan to restore relations fail due to
Turkey’s uneasiness over a recent ruling by an Armenian court that
Ankara says threatens agreements between the two, it will be Turkey
that will lose credibility, Armenian analysts have warned.

After months of Swiss mediation and US encouragement, Turkey and
Armenia signed two protocols in October 2009 to establish diplomatic
ties and reopen their shared border. However, the process hit rocky
ground after Armenia’s constitutional court upheld the legality of the
protocols last month but underlined that they could not contradict
Yerevan’s official position that the alleged Armenian genocide must
be internationally recognized.

Turkey accused Yerevan of trying to rewrite and set conditions on the
deals. Armenia’s president and foreign minister have warned that the
rapprochement is under threat of collapse.

Richard Giragosian, head of the Armenian Center for National and
International Studies (ACNIS), argues that Turkey’s objection to the
Constitutional court’s ruling is "weak."

Underlining that even Moscow and Washington, who are usually at odds
on a number of issues, agreed that the normalization process between
Armenia and Turkey should move ahead, Girogosian also recalled that
both Moscow and Washington have warned Turkey that it should not link
it to the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, a territorial
dispute between Armenia and Turkey’s neighbor Azerbaijan.

The reconciliation process is complicated by Ankara’s insistence
that normalizing Turkish-Armenian ties depends on a resolution on
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict favoring Azerbaijan.

"In case of a failure, the [Armenian hard-line] opposition will be
justified. Even moderates will no longer trust Turkey," Giragosian
told Today’s Zaman.

Tevan Poghosyan, executive director of the Armenia-based International
Center for Human Development (ICHD), accused Turkey of running away
from the normalization process.

What matters is the fact that Armenia’s constitutional court upheld
the legality of the protocols, Poghosyan told Today’s Zaman, while
describing Turkey’s objections as "artificial."

Suggesting that Russia, the US and the European Union also believe
that Turkey’s objections are not righteous, Poghosyan added: "This
situation shows that Turkey has been playing. Didn’t Turkey at the
time recognize Armenia according to the Declaration of Independence?"

Poghosyan was referring to the fact that the heart of the matter
for Ankara is the court’s reference to Armenia’s Declaration of
Independence, which states, "The Republic of Armenia stands in support
of the task of achieving international recognition of the 1915 Genocide
in Ottoman Turkey and Western Armenia."

The fifth paragraph of the Armenian court’s ruling says that the
protocols "cannot be interpreted or applied" in a way that would
contradict the provisions of the preamble to Armenia’s constitution and
the requirements of paragraph 11 of its declaration of independence.

Last week, James Holmes, a retired US ambassador and the president and
chief executive officer of the American-Turkish Council (ATC), also
suggested that Turkey would be the party that circles in Washington
will hold responsible if efforts by Ankara and Yerevan to normalize
their relations fail.