ARMENIAN PRESIDENT URGES TURKEY TO DROP PRECONDITIONS TO PEACE TALKS

World Markets Research Centre
Global Insight
April 14 2010

The Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan’s press office issued a
statement on Monday (12 April) confirming that Sargsyan has spoken
to Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines
of a nuclear summit in the U.S. capital Washington D.C. about
the progress of the bilateral peace process. According to the
statement, Sargsyan reiterated the Armenian government’s commitment
to continuing the process of rapprochement with Turkey. However he
has told Erdogan that "Turkey cannot speak to Armenia and Armenians
in the language of preconditions." The Armenian president had urged
the Turkish government to stick to the main principle of the two
peace protocols–establishing diplomatic ties and opening common
border checkpoints–without any preconditions. Sargsyan further had
clarified that his country would not accept Turkish preconditions,
which boil down to two demands–the Armenian government should drop
the pursuit of international recognition of the mass killings of
1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915-1917 as genocide;
and the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh must
be resolved in favour of Azerbaijan, Turkey’s ethnic kin. The two
protocols were mediated by the European Union (EU), United States
and Russia and signed by the Armenian and Turkish foreign ministers
in Zurich, Switzerland, on 10 October 2009 (seeTurkey – Armenia:
12 October 2009:).

Significance:The much hailed Armenian-Turkish rapprochement is
progressing slowly with several twists and turns along the path to
official reconciliation (seeTurkey – Armenia: 8 April 2010:). When
Armenia and Turkey made the historic deal in 2009, many in the West
hoped for a quick opening of diplomatic channels between the two
peoples that have been divided by a centuries-old animosity. The
Armenian president, partially aided by his near-absolute monopoly
over power in his country, managed to make significant headway with
the protocols. The Armenian constitutional court confirmed that the
accords’ implementation did not contradict the country’s constitution
and sent them to the National Assembly for ratification. However,
Ergodan’s government is backtracking on the agreements by imposing
fresh preconditions which were not part of the deal in October 2009.

The Turkish government is in a peculiar state as its hopes of
containing the issue of the Armenian massacres as well as resolving
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict did not work out well. With the approach
of 24 April, marked worldwide by Armenians as a day of commemoration
of victims of the genocide, Turkey is likely to be under increased
international pressure, particularly by the United States, to show
at least some signs of compromise even if the government fails to
deliver on them.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress