ARTAK ZAKARYAN: RUSSIAN-TURKISH RELATIONS ARE PRIMARILY OF ECONOMIC NATURE
Nelly Danielyan

"Radiolur"
14.05.2010 16:34

"The Armenian Turkish protocols provided an opportunity to Turkey to
penetrate into the Karabakh settlement process," representative of the
Armenian National Congress Karapet Rubinyan told a press conference
today. Member of the Republican Party of Armenia Artak Zakaryan
said Armenia’s interests were not undermined in the Armenian-Turkish
reconciliation process. "Despite all efforts, Turkey did not manage
to speak in the language of preconditions with Armenia," he added.

As for the Russian-Turkish rapprochement, Karapet Rubinyan ties the
process to Armenia’s initiative of normalizing relations with Armenia.

"The Armenian-Turkish flirt cannot be considered separately from the
Russian-Turkish rapprochement. Today we see that Russia is rather
flexible in those relations," he noted.

Artak Zakaryan considers, however, that the Russian-Turkish ties have
always existed irrespective of Armenian-Turkish relations.

"I think the Russian-Turkish relations are primarily of economic
importance. Turkey understood that building its foreign policy on one
vector was dangerous, because it was hard to get rid of the influence
of the West. Now it is trying to balance the influence of the West
and the East, i.e. Russia," he said.

Artak Zakaryan noted that "the interests of the superpowers collide
on Karabakh issue, and Armenia should try to draw maximum benefits
from it."