Monday,
Turkish-Armenian Talks Due To Start In Moscow
• Tatevik Sargsian
Turkish Foreign Minister Cavusoglu attends a news conference with his Lebanese
counterpart in Beirut
Special envoys named by Armenia and Turkey will likely hold their first meeting
in Moscow, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Monday.
The envoys were appointed earlier this month after the governments of the two
neighboring states said they will try to normalize bilateral relations.
Ankara will be represented in the upcoming talks by Serdar Kilic, an experienced
diplomat who served as Turkey’s ambassador to the United States from 2014-2021.
Kilic’s 31-year-old Armenian counterpart, Ruben Rubinian, is a deputy speaker of
the Armenian parliament.
“It seems to us that the first meeting of the negotiators will take place in
Moscow,” Cavusoglu told a news conference in Ankara. “The Armenian side has
expressed such a desire.”
“We want the two sides to have direct contacts before the meeting. The envoys
were appointed for a direct dialogue,” he said, adding that they should work out
a “roadmap” to a Turkish-Armenian rapprochement.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Vahan Hunanian, said in this regard
that the two sides are discussing the possibility of holding the first round of
Turkish-Armenian talks in Moscow. No date has been set for the talks yet,
Hunanian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Russia as well as the United States have welcomed the announcement of
Turkish-Armenian normalization talks. Yerevan asked Moscow last month to assist
in that dialogue.
Ankara has for decades refused to establish diplomatic relations with Yerevan
and kept the Turkish-Armenian border closed out of solidarity with Azerbaijan.
It provided decisive military support to Baku during last year’s
Armenian-Azerbaijani war over Nagorno-Karabakh.
In recent months Turkish leaders have made statements making the normalization
of Turkish-Armenian relations conditional on Armenia agreeing to open a land
corridor that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave. They have
also cited Baku’s demands for a formal Armenian recognition of Azerbaijani
sovereignty over Karabakh.
Cavusoglu reiterated on Monday that Ankara will continue to coordinate its
Armenian policy with Baku.
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan complained last month that the Turks
are setting “new preconditions” for establishing diplomatic relations and
opening the border with Armenia. His spokesman insisted afterwards that Yerevan
continues to stand for “normalizing relations with Turkey without preconditions.”
Kocharian Remains Cautious About Anti-Government Protests
• Artak Khulian
Armenia -- Former President Robert Kocharian gives a press conference in
Yerevan, .
Former President Robert Kocharian said on Monday that it is still too early to
try to topple Armenia’s government with streets protests that were promised by
his opposition alliance this fall.
Speaking at a yearend news conference in Yerevan, Kocharian also denounced the
government’s “utter failures” in all key policy areas and the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict in particular. He joined in the chorus of condemnation aimed at Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian’s latest statements on the conflict.
“It is clear that if the prime minister says that since 2016 there has not been
even a theoretical chance of Karabakh obtaining a status outside Azerbaijan then
this is the position of Armenia,” he said. “This means that Armenia has washed
its hands of Karabakh.”
Kocharian’s Hayastan alliance and other opposition groups blame Pashinian for
Armenia’s defeat in last year’s war with Azerbaijan that left at least 3,800
Armenian soldiers dead. The prime minister again charged late last week that the
six-week war was the result of peace talks mishandled by former Armenian leaders.
Kocharian pledged to bring down Pashinian’s government “through barricades or
elections” when Hayastan launched last month what it called a “nationwide
resistance” campaign with a rally in Yerevan. The bloc, which has emerged as the
country’s leading opposition force, has staged no further protests since then.
Armenia - Supporters of former President Robert Kocharian and his opposition
alliance attend an election campaign rally in Yerevan, June 18, 2021.
The ex-president said on Monday that despite what he sees as a sharp drop in
Pashinian’s approval ratings Armenians are still not willing to attend
anti-government demonstrations in very large numbers.
“According to our estimates, that drop in the approval rating has not yet
translated into a mass readiness for an active struggle in the streets,” he told
reporters. “We believe that these people [led by Pashinian] will not give up
power willingly. It will take mass street protests to oust them. Not [protests
attended] by five, six or ten thousand people but mass protests.”
“We don’t see that conditions are ripe for that today,” Kocharian went on. “And
this disappoints some of our supporters, who are ready for that struggle. They
are ready to fight, stage sit-ins, do everything. But we cannot lead those
people to such upheavals unprepared.”
“We are preparing for those mass protests. We are on that path,” he said,
hinting that the launch of a protest movement is a matter of months.
Kocharian admitted that some Armenians have also lost faith in the opposition
since the June parliamentary elections won by the ruling Civil Contract party.
“We just think -- and we hope -- that our approval ratings can recover,” he
said, adding that Pashinian’s falling popularity is irreversible.
Pashinian’s party won the snap elections with almost 54 percent of the vote,
according to their official results. Hayastan came in a distant second with 21
percent.
Karabakh Leadership Rejects Pashinian’s ‘Pro-Azeri’ Statements
Nagorno-Karabakh - The main government buildings in Stepanakert, September 7,
2019.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian leadership has openly criticized Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian for making statements which his political opponents say
play into Azerbaijan’s hands.
In televised remarks aired late on Friday, Pashinian again blamed Armenia’s
former leaders for last year’s war over Karabakh won by Azerbaijan. He said it
was the result of their mishandling of protracted peace talks with Baku.
He reiterated his criticism of peace plans drawn up by the U.S., Russian and
French mediators since 2016. He claimed that they envisaged the eventual
restoration of Azerbaijani control over Karabakh.
Pashinian further declared that “Artsakh (Karabakh) could not have ended up
being completely Armenian.” “It was obvious during those negotiations that
Artsakh is going to have both Armenian and Azerbaijani populations,” he said.
Opposition politicians in Armenia were quick to denounce the remarks. They
claimed that Pashinian is not only trying to dodge responsibility for the
disastrous war but also preparing the ground for Karabakh’s return under
Azerbaijani rule.
Ara Harutiunian, the Karabakh president, also took issue with the remarks in
rare public criticism of Pashinian.
“The people and the authorities of Artsakh will never accept any status [of
autonomy] within Azerbaijan,” Harutiunian wrote on Facebook on Sunday. “There
can be no return to the past in terms of not only status but also demography.”
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian meets with Karabakh President Arayik
Harutiunian in Yerevan, November 3, 2021.
He stressed that only the authorities in Stepanakert can speak for the
territory’s predominantly Armenian population.
The Karabakh parliament expressed outrage at Pashinian’s statements in a
statement unanimously adopted on Monday. It accused the Armenian premier of
“distorting the essence” of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict and calling into
question the very “existence of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.”
The statement also insisted that peace proposals made by the U.S., Russian and
French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group in recent years upheld the Karabakh
Armenians’ right to self-determination.
Pashinian rejected the unprecedented criticism in two lengthy Facebook posts.
Pashinian began criticizing the mediators’ peace plans shortly after the
six-week war stopped by Russia in November 2020. In a January 2021 article, he
claimed that their most recent version amounted to a proposed “surrender of
lands” to Azerbaijan “in return for nothing.” The then Russian co-chair of the
Minsk Group, Igor Popov, bluntly denied that.
NAGORNO KARABAKH -- Teenagers sit near the 'We are our Montains' monument in
Stepanakert, January 15, 2021
Pashinian and his political allies made more such claims in the following
months. In particular, parliament speaker Alen Simonian last month described as
pro-Azerbaijani a peace accord that was drafted by the mediators and reportedly
promoted by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in 2016.
A Russian Foreign Ministry official hit back at Simonian early this month. The
official argued that the proposed deal stipulated that Karabakh’s
internationally recognized status would be determined through a future
referendum and envisaged firm security guarantees for its population.
“Once again compare those proposals of the co-chairs with the current situation
and draw conclusions,” the official added, alluding to sweeping Armenian
territorial losses suffered as a result of the war.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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