ARMENIA-TURKEY RAPPROCHEMENT WAS DAVUTOGLU’S STUMBLING BLOCK: AMBERIN ZAMAN

Tert.am
05.05.10

During Ahmet Davutoglu’s first year in office as Turkish Foreign
Minister Ankara had many serious achievements in its foreign
policy, but the only failure he had was perhaps the Armenia-Turkey
normalization, writes famous Turkish jounalist Amberin Zaman in local
Turkish daily Haberturk.

"Casting a look at Davutoglu’s one year in office, it should be said
that … no other foreign minister has received so much appraisal. He
is a real intellectual. … The only bad mark in Davutoglu’s diary was
the way of the Armenia-Turkey normalization drawn by Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan. There is no mention of Azerbaijan and Nagorno
Karabakh in the Protocols. If there was an aim to make Armenia take
steps over Karabakh through the Protocols, then we saw the result:
Armenia froze the Protocols," writes Zaman, adding that Armenia will
make no concessions unless the issue of Karabakh’s status is resolved.

Further pointing what she calls "reliable sources" Zaman mentions that
during a recent meeting in Washington Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan presented to the Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan a
proposal package which mentioned those regions adjacent to Karabakh
that the Armenian troops should withdraw from, which took the Armenian
delegation aback.

"Much in the same way as we do not withdraw from the Cyprus or reduce
the quantity of our troops, Armenia holds those regions for talks
and will hardly withdraw [its troops] from there unless the status
of Nagorno Karabakh is eventually defined," concludes Amberin Zaman.