YEREVAN. April 24
Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan is pessimistic about the likelihood that Armenia could normalize relations with Turkey anytime soon.
"Unfortunately, the news coming from Ankara is uninspiring," Mnatsakanyan told journalists on Wednesday, when asked about the possibility of normalization in Armenian-Turkish relations.
"We have never made the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Turkey a precondition," he said.
Armenia commemorates the victims of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire on April 24.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said while visiting Iran at end-February 2019 that the position assumed by the Turkish leadership left no room for a substantive conversation on normalizing Armenian-Turkish relations.
"Turkey is continuing to tie bilateral relations to the Karabakh-Armenian-Azerbaijan relations. As long as the situation is such, we cannot have any reasons for optimism, even though we say that we are willing to discuss these relations without preconditions. But Turkey has been setting a precondition related to Karabakh," Pashinyan said at a meeting with members of the Armenian community in Tehran.
"So, this position leaves no room for a serious conversation about Armenian-Turkish relations," he said.
The recognition of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire in 2015 is "extremely important" for Armenia, but it is not making this a precondition, he said.
"Can this be interpreted as a precondition when we talk about the recognition of the genocide? The fight against genocide is an item of the global security agenda. We will continue our efforts toward the recognition of the Armenian Genocide," he said.
