TURKEY’S PM ACCUSES ARMENIA OF "OPERATING" ON PROTOCOLS
news.az
Jan 20 2010
Azerbaijan
Recep Tayyip Erdogan Recep Tayyip Erdogan has added his voice
to Turkish criticism of an Armenian court ruling on protocols on
rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia.
"Armenia has operated on the text", Erdogan said, referring to the
Armenian Constitutional Court’s ruling on the protocols.
The Turkish prime minister was speaking at a joint press conference in
Jeddah with the secretary general of the Organization of the Islamic
Conference (OIC), Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu.
"Turkey sent the protocols straight to the Turkish parliament without
making any other institution an intermediary. We have not conducted
an operation on the sentences. We have sent the protocols as they
were signed and showed good faith," Erdogan said.
Erdogan said that Armenia’s attempt "to operate on the protocols"
should be corrected.
Turkey is not in a position to keep relations between Azerbaijan and
Armenia "out of this context", Erdogan said.
In Turkey’s first public criticism of the Armenian court decision,
the Foreign Ministry said in a press release on Monday that the ruling
"contains preconditions and restrictive provisions which impair the
letter and spirit of the Protocols".
The protocols were signed in Zurich on 10 October 2008 by the foreign
ministers of Armenia and Turkey. The first protocol covers the opening
of the Armenian-Turkish border and the normalization of relations,
while the second envisages the establishment of a joint historical
commission to investigate the events of 1915 in Ottoman Turkey,
which Armenia insists constituted genocide.