OBAMA URGES TURKEY, ARMENIA TO IMPLEMENT NORMALIZATION DEAL
Hurriyet
April 13 2010
Turkey
U.S. President Barack Obama has urged Turkey and Armenia to put into
effect a stalled deal to normalize their relations.
Obama "urged that both Armenia and Turkey make every effort to advance
the normalization process and achieve legislative ratification of
the protocols of normalization," the White House said late on Monday
after a meeting between the U.S. president and Armenian President Serge
Sarkisian on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit in Washington.
"The president commended President Sarkisian for his courageous efforts
to achieve the normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey
and encouraged him to fulfill the promise of normalization for the
benefit of the Armenian people," it said in a statement.
Separately, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who represented Turkey
at the summit, also met with Sarkisian to discuss the normalization
process.
Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers signed last October a set
of agreements under which Ankara and Yerevan would set up normal
diplomatic relations and reopen their land border.
But the normalization process is now faltering. The Turkey-Armenia
accord needs to be ratified by the parliaments of the two neighbors
before implementation, and there is still no indication of when both
nations may bring the deal to their parliamentary agendas.
Karabakh problem
The problem that lies at the root of the issue is the unresolved
Nagorno-Karabakh dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Turkey’s
close friend and ally. Turkey first wants to see progress toward a
solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict before opening its border
with Armenia, and the Armenians are showing no sign of this.
Nagorno-Karabakh, a mostly Armenian-populated enclave inside
Azerbaijan, and parts of Azerbaijan proper have been under Armenian
occupation since a war in the early 1990s. As a result of this war,
Turkey has refused normal diplomatic relations with Yerevan and has
kept the land border with Armenia closed since 1993.
The U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in early
March also narrowly passed a resolution calling for official U.S.
recognition of claims of World War I-era killings of Armenians in
the Ottoman Empire as genocide.
Turkey strongly reacted against the move by temporarily recalling its
ambassador to Washington and warning that a full House endorsement
of the resolution would hurt bilateral ties in a major and lasting way.
It is not clear yet if or when the bill could come to a full House
floor vote.
During his speech at the nuclear security summit, Erdogan denounced the
"genocide" resolution effort in the U.S. Congress. "We are against a
one-sided interpretation of history," Erdogan said. "History cannot
be written in a parliament or judged by a parliament."
Group’s call
Meanwhile, ANCA, the largest U.S. Armenian group, urged Obama to
qualify the last century’s Armenian killings as "genocide" in his
annual statement on April 24, the day commemorated in the United
States to mark the Armenian deaths.
"We would consider it highly inappropriate for the president of the
United States to have invited the president of Armenia to Washington
only days before April 24th if he had an intention of doing anything
less than fully recognizing the Armenian genocide, fully honoring
his commitment to recognize this crime against humanity," said Aram
Hamparian, the ANCA’s executive director.
"We are looking forward to President Obama keeping faith with his own
words and keeping faith with the relationship he seeks with Armenia
by recognizing the Armenian genocide," Hamparian said.
Turkish officials warn that, if Obama in his April 24 statement
qualifies the Armenian deaths as genocide, then it would be a huge
blow to the U.S.-Turkish relationship and will effectively kill the
normalization process with Armenia.