ARMENIA-TURKEY RECONCILIATION DEADLOCKED
news.am
Jan 11 2010
Armenia
It has been more than three months since the Turkish and Armenian
foreign ministers signed the two protocols that were supposed to
launch a historic reconciliation and rapprochement process between
Yerevan and Ankara," Turkish Today’s Zaman reads.
NEWS.am posts the passages.
According to the daily, "there were major obstacles from the very
start. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had already linked the
ratification of the protocols and the opening of the Turkish-Armenian
border to Armenian concessions in Nagorno-Karabakh."
"Given the considerable influence of the Azeri lobby in Turkey and
the fact that Turkey gets much of its oil and gas from Azerbaijan,
this outside pressure further exacerbates domestic difficulties. All
these dynamics explain the AKP’s reluctance vis-a-vis the ratification
of the two protocols," the daily says.
Speaking about Armenia’s stance the author underlined that "situation
in Armenia is equally complicated."
"Yerevan has no intention of relinquishing control of Nagorno-Karabakh
and must contend with the hard-line views of its influential global
Diaspora and vocal domestic opposition. The majority of Diaspora
Armenians have spent decades trying to persuade their governments
to recognize the mass killing of Turkish Armenians in 1915-1918 as
Genocide. Given all these dimensions to the problem, there are clear
limits to how much pressure the administration of Serzh Sarksyan
can endure. Facing growing domestic opposition, the pressure of the
diaspora and the negative tone in Ankara, it is not surprising that
Yerevan is having second thoughts about staying the course. Armenian
Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan recently cautioned that if Turkey tried
to link the Karabakh progress to the ratification of the protocols
then Armenia &’would be free’ to impose conditions of its own."
From: Baghdasarian