OTHER CONFIGURATION IS POSSIBLE
Lragir.am
11/12/09
The visit of the Turkish premier Reccep Erdogan to the U.S. and the
joint statements made after it with the U.S. president Barack Obama
aroused ambiguous assessments within the Armenian political elite. The
Armenian opposition keeps insisting that Turkey will never ratify the
protocols until there is no progress in the Karabakh issue. Moreover,
Sargsyan has already made clear that in case Turkey starts protracting
the ratification of the Armenia-Turkey protocols signed in Zurich
on October 10, Armenia will immediately undertake relevant measures
in accordance with the international right (hint at the readiness to
declare the Armenia-Turkey protocols invalid).
Sometimes the impression is that the Armenian and Turkish normalization
met an impassable obstacle. For comments, we turned to the expert
of the Armenian Centre for National and International studies Manvel
Sargsyan.
"I would not hurry to state about a deadlock in the Armenian and
Turkish relations. Of course, Armenia will never accept the conditions
of Turkey to connect the process with Nagorno-Karabakh issue. It will
not accept such as a version, because now Azerbaijan will never make
a smallest concession. But this does not mean that Turkey may easily
refuse the normalization process with Armenia. Merely, the sides face
the problem of reforming the principles of the normalization process.
Until now, all cherished the hope that conditions can be made
initially to withdraw themselves on the basis of the negotiations of
the parties. But time has shown that no one is going to just refuse
the process of establishing relations between Armenia and Turkey,"-
said Manvel Sargsyan.
Touching upon the interested positions in the Armenian-Turkish
rapprochement instances, Sargsyan said: "The fact that no one is taking
risk was clearly understood from the caution arguments of the premier
of Turkey. Recall that Erdogan after meeting with Obama explained that
he brought to the U.S. president the "truth" that "the government can
in no way affect this process. … In our parliament, the adoption
of this document requires efforts". That is, Erdogan left place to
review the positions of Turkey in accordance with developments. I
must say that Erdogan’s diplomatic course arouses respect: in any
case of any political development, he will only be in advantage in
his country. But that developments can be complex is evident from the
increasing messages that "the American president hinted to the Turkish
prime minister that the resolution on the recognition of the Armenian
Genocide is also difficult to be prevented in the U.S. Congress,
if in the nearest future the protocols are not ratified".
No one has yet denied this information. So, the countries are occupied
in attaching additional weights to the situation with the ratification
of the protocols. Serge Sargsyan’s statements on December 10 can
also be described as the Armenian weighting scales. Soon, perhaps,
the OSCE Minsk group Azerbaijan, Europe, and so on will shed something
on the situation.
As to the question on how such a diplomatic "competition" may end,
the ACNIS expert said, "Much depends on the change of the international
situation itself over the Armenian-Turkish relations". "Until recently,
senior representatives of Turkey stated that the true aim of the
initiative for rapprochement with Armenia is to enhance the process
of settlement of the Karabakh problem. Today we can see that this
initiative, with some developments may not only delay the settlement
of the conflict, but, conversely, it may intensify the process of
the international recognition of the Genocide of 1915.
Tomorrow a radically new configuration of international interests
and forces may come out to be developed over the Armenian-Turkish
relations where the focus will be entirely on a different problem,
in particular, the security problem. It is no accident there appeared
a thesis "in case of non-ratification, there can be serious shocks
in the US-Turkish relations. Further-more …", – the expert said.
According to Sargsyan, it would be better if Armenia and Turkey
did not go through the weighting of their scales. The principle
"without preconditions" is the best guarantee against the threat
of degeneration process of normalization of relations in a complex
international problem. No need to inscribe these relations in the
context of broader and more complex problems.