Turkey has always posited three preconditions before Armenia to normalize relations: The territorial integrity of Azerbaijan—including Karabakh, the unconditional return of seven regions, and not to manifest enthusiasm in connection with the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide—or in other words, passing that matter on to historians. The second president of Armenia, leader of the opposition "Armenia" Bloc Robert Kocharyan stated about this during his year-end press conference Monday—and responding to Armenian News-NEWS.am's question on how the process of establishing relations with Turkey today differ from the respective processes of his time in office.
"Now the precondition of the ‘Zangezur corridor’ has increased. Look at what happened to those preconditions. Our approach has always been the following: We [i.e., Armenia] are ready to build relations [with Turkey] without preconditions. Even when they were talking from the border, we were saying the [Armenian-Turkish] border is open on our side, closed on the other side. What happened to those three preconditions?
Let's start with the second. Not [just] seven districts were returned, but [also] Shushi and Hadrut [cities of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)]—with a bonus. In fact, this precondition no longer exists. In connection with the Genocide, Armenia is so weak today that to think it can succeed in the Genocide recognition matter, perhaps in the distant future, but today the Armenian authorities have left that issue entirely to the offices of the Armenian National Committee. Second, such matters may be petitioned to countries that may have a some interest in punishing Turkey at one time or another. There is no other resource. In fact, two of the three preconditions have been successfully resolved for them," Kocharyan stated.
As for the precondition of recognizing the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, ex-President Kocharyan reminded that before the Brussels meeting, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at the National Assembly that as of 2016, there is not even a theoretical option for Karabakh not being part of Azerbaijan.
"What does this mean? This means that yes, the first person of Armenia says that he does not see any option, any status outside [being part of] Azerbaijan. He reaffirmed it during this last press conference [of his]. Now all three preconditions [of Turkey] have been met [by Armenia]. And when they say we are ready to establish relations with Turkey without preconditions, it is difficult to invent a bigger hypocrisy. You have fulfilled all the preconditions; moreover, you are discussing the issue of the [‘Zangezur] corridor,’" Kocharyan said.
And reflecting on the Armenian-Turkish relations during his presidency, Kocharyan said: "In my time, yes, there were contacts. When [Turkish President] Erdogan's party won the parliamentary elections in 2002, the first [Turkish] foreign minister was Abdullah Gul. There was a multi-faceted event with him in Madrid. [Then Armenian FM] Vartan Oskanian was quite excited. He called me and said that the Turkish side was ready for negotiations without preconditions. I said, ‘Vartan, I do not believe, they are still new [in power], they are ‘hot,’ they probably have not realized that Azerbaijan will hinder them. Do not make a big fuss about it, it does not turn out that we are creating expectations.’
Gul said ‘without preconditions.’ Do you recall they were putting forward a notion that ‘We are zeroing the problems with all our neighbors?’ As a result, they had much deeper problems with all the neighbors.
After the second meeting, Oskanian told me that they were somehow retreating [from the talks]. And during the third meeting, we completely returned to where we started. This was an encouraging moment in Armenian-Turkish relations, which lasted 6-7 months, no more."