Serzh Sargsyan Rescued Erdogan And Protocols: Mehmet Ali Birand

SERZH SARGSYAN RESCUED ERDOGAN AND PROTOCOLS: MEHMET ALI BIRAND

Tert.am
24.04.10

Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan saved both the Armenia-Turkey
Protocols and the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan by
his recent decision to suspend the ratification of those Protocols,
writes famous Turkish journalist, analyst and Chief Editor of CNNTurk
Mehmet Ali Birand.

"Armenia suspended the Protocols signed with Turkey. If approached
from that view point, at first glance it may look like a negative
development. But that is not the case. Just on the contrary. That
important decision prevented the imminent death of the Protocols. I am
inclined to back that second view as Armenia, the United States and
Europe were convinced that Turkey linked the opening of the boarder
with Turkey to the Karabakh conflict," writes Birand, adding that in
that respect Ankara’s stance was greatly harming the policy pursued
by Serzh Sargsyan.

According to Birand that line of action of Turkey inflicted a lot
of wounds on the policy implemented by Sargsyan. In his words the
general picture of how things stood last month was the following:
the Protocols had been sent to the Armenian parliament, but were not
being ratified because of that precondition.

Further Birand says that Armenia would send the Protocols to the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanding to annul them and also withdraw
Armenia’s signature, should Ankara have not acted.

"That is to say the Protocols would officially be buried. And it
would not be easy to start everything anew," writes Mehmet Ali Birand.