YEREVAN, September 6. /ARKA/. There is no good news about normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey, Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan told reporters on Friday in response to a question about the prospects of establishment of contacts between the two countries.

The minister described the situation as 'not very pleasant', blaming it on Turkey's renunciation of the Zurich protocols, the continued blockade of Armenia, the pronounced bias in the Karabakh conflict settlement and  the denial of the Armenian Genocide,  expressed also in attempts to justify it.

“We are ready to establish relations with Turkey without preconditions, but in this context I can’t say what kind of developments may unfold, and I can’t say that we have good news in this direction,” Mnatsakanyan said.

Speaking at an annual gathering of top Armenian diplomats late last month Mnatsakanyan said that Turkey poses a serious threat to Armenia.

Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic relations; the border between the two countries was closed in 1993 by Ankara in solidarity with Azerbaijan.  Relations between Armenia and Turkey remain tense because of Ankara’s biased stance on Karabakh problem and its painful reaction to Armenia’s efforts to obtain worldwide recognition of the Armenian Genocide, committed by the Ottoman Turkey during World War I.

In 2009, on October 10, Armenia and Turkey signed "Protocol on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations" and the "Protocol on the Development of Bilateral Relations" in Zurich, Switzerland, which were to be ratified by the parliaments of both countries.

However, on 22 April 2010, then president of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan signed a decree suspending the ratification of the protocols, stating that Turkey was not ready to continue the process, since it became known that the protocols had been automatically removed from the Turkish parliament’s agenda.

Speaking at the UN General Assembly in September 2017 Serzh Sargsyan stated that Armenia never put the recognition of the Armenian Genocide as a precondition for regulating relations with Ankara. Sargsyan said also that in the absence of positive progress on the part of Turkey, Armenia would declare them null and void in 2018 spring.  On March 1, 2018 Serzh Sargsyan declared the Armenian-Turkish protocols void and null. –0–