ARMENIAN RULING COULD ‘IMPAIR’ PROTOCOLS, SAYS TURKEY’S FOREIGN MINISTRY
Hurriyet Daily News
ish-foreign-ministry-says-armenian-ruling-could-hu rt-protocols-2010-01-19
Jan 19 2010
Turkey
Armenian President Serge Sarkisian (L) shares a joke with his Turkish
counterpart Abdullah Gul, on Oct. 14, 2009, during the World Cup 2010
qualifying football match between Turkey and Armenia. AFP photo
A published decision by Armenia’s top court about the constitutionality
of the protocols that could pave the way for diplomatic relations with
Turkey could hurt the negotiation process, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry
said Monday.
"It has been observed that this decision contains preconditions
and restrict provisions that impair the letter and spirit of the
protocols," the ministry said in a statement.
The Armenian court’s Jan. 12 decision established that the protocols
with Turkey conformed to the country’s constitution.
But the decision also stipulated that the agreement must not
contradict Paragraph 11 of the Declaration of Independence, which
states, "The Republic of Armenia stands in support of the task of
achieving international recognition of the 1915 Genocide in Ottoman
Turkey and Western Armenia," likely the section the Turkish Foreign
Ministry protested in its statement.
Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic relations and their border has
been closed since 1993, after Armenia’s invasion of 20 percent of
Azerbaijani territory.
The territorial conflict, referred to as Nagorno-Karabakh, was tied
to the normalization process after Turkish leaders warned it would be
hard to pass the protocols without any progress toward a resolution
to Karabakh.
Armenia has expressed growing frustration over the Turkish Parliament’s
failure to ratify the protocols. The Armenian parliament also has
yet to ratify the accords.
The first protocol, covering the establishment of diplomatic relations,
and the second, on the further development of bilateral relations,
are accompanied by an annex that sets a clear timetable for the
implementation of both.