Rustamian: Accepting Turkey, EU stops being repository of values

Noyan Tapan News Agency
Sept 23 2005

ARMEN RUSTAMIAN: ACCEPTING TURKEY, EUROPEAN UNION STOPS BEING
REPOSITORY OF SYSTEM OF VALUES AROUND WHICH CREATED

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. If today’s
Turkey which doesn’t correspond to European values. enter the
European Union, the European Union will stop being the repository of
the system of values around which that structure was first formed.
Armen Rustamian, a representative of the ARF Supreme Body of Armenia,
the Chairman of the NA Standing Committee on Foreign Relations stated
about this at the September 22 press-conference.

According to him, the fear of the peoples of France and Holland, that
the European Union can lose its essense being strengthened by means
of new bureaucratic mechanisms and becoming a political structure,
was one of reasons of failure of the referendum of the EU
Constitution in these countries. Particularly, interviews held in
France showed that the most part of those saying “no” sees danger in
Turkey’s membership to the EU.

According to Rustamian, if Turkey completely correspond to the
European system of values, it will recognize the Armenian Genocide
immediatly. According to him, refusal of the fact of the Genocide
shows that today’s Turkey doesn’t differ from the Ottaman Turkey, and
it’s not excluded that it should take similar steps again.

According to him, the issue of the Genocide can’t be considered as a
historical or moral problem as it’s more than modern and relates to
geographic-political developments of the South Caucasus and the whole
eastern region, That’s why, according to the rapporteur, the issue is
replaced on the political field and “cut off its source and reasons.”
“We should be able to touch upon the problem of the Genocide in right
time and in right way and never make it a subject of trade, a subject
of hagglings,” Rustamian stated.