21 January 2010 / EMRULLAH BAYRAK, ANKARA
Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli has demanded that the protocols signed by Armenia and Turkey to normalize relations between the two countries be withdrawn from Parliament.
Following Ankara’s reaction to an Armenian Constitutional Court ruling approving the protocols but at the same time establishing “restrictions” on their implementation, the MHP released a written statement.
MHP officials claimed that this new situation showed that the protocols would not change an article in the Armenian Declaration of Independence defining eastern Anatolia as “Western Armenia.” The MHP statement also said that the ruling by Armenia’s top court emphasized that the protocols concern bilateral relations only between Turkey and Armenia and leave out the Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is under Armenian occupation. Calling the present situation “shameful,” the MHP claimed that the Turkish nation had been “deceived.”
