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Ankara hopes for ‘reflection’ in Armenia process
“We still have hope,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said on Friday while speaking to a group of journalists on board a plane en route to Lefkoşa from Tallinn, commenting on Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan’s Thursday announcement that he would suspend the ratification of two protocols signed with Turkey on the normalization of ties. Sarksyan, however, said he was not abandoning the normalization process.
“What matters is the emphasis on the continuation of the process. We hope conditions get better and that the process continues again. We see this process as a process which will be beneficial for the entire region. Nothing has changed for Turkey,” Davutoğlu said.
Sarksyan said on Thursday that he was not abandoning the normalization process but instead would “suspend the procedure of ratifying the protocols.” “We shall consider moving forward when we are convinced that there is a proper environment in Turkey and there is leadership in Ankara ready to re-engage in the normalization process,” he said in a televised address.
Armenia’s ruling coalition of three parties had earlier announced it was freezing ratification of the deal because “the Turkish side is refusing to ratify the protocols without preconditions and in a reasonable timeframe.” Davutoğlu said Turkey remained committed to the principle of pacta sunt servanda -- a principle of international law which means in Latin that agreements must be kept -- while saying that Turkey understands Armenia’s difficulties and expects same kind of understanding from Yerevan. “We hope that everybody will have the opportunity for reflection during this process,” Davutoğlu added.
During a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Tallinn, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told him that what matters is the continuation of the process, Davutoğlu explained.
Neither Turkey nor Armenia has ratified the October protocols to restore diplomatic ties and re-open their mutual border. Armenia’s governing coalition accuses Turkey of dragging its feet by demanding the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, a territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, be settled first.
“When suitable conditions emerge, we will be ready to take further steps,” Davutoğlu said, recalling that the protocols were being discussed at Parliament’s Foreign Affairs’ Commission. “For us, parallelism [regarding the ratification processes in Ankara and Yerevan] is important.”
Hours before the meeting between Clinton and Davutoğlu, senior US officials stated that the US remains hopeful that Turkey and Armenia will move toward reconciliation despite Yerevan freezing the accords that would end decades of hostility.
“We are actually encouraged that, both in the case of Armenia and Turkey, they have taken pains to make sure the process doesn’t collapse,” US State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said at a daily press briefing on Thursday. “That gives us some reason for optimism that over the long term we can find ways to come back to it and try to push forward the protocols again,” he said.
“Neither side has walked away from the process, but I think we all recognize that we’ll just need some time to ... create some new momentum that allows the process to move forward,” said Crowley.
In Paris, a statement by French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s office said the French president welcomed Sarksyan’s “confirmation of his commitment to the normalization process despite difficulties faced by the both sides.”
Sarkozy at the same time encouraged both Armenian and Turkish officials “to maintain dialogue and increase their efforts for the implementation of the protocols in the shortest time [possible],” noting that implementation of the protocols “will make a noteworthy contribution to peace and security throughout the region.”
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