After months of Swiss mediation and US encouragement, Turkey and Armenia signed two protocols in October 2009 to establish diplomatic ties and reopen their shared border. However, the process hit rocky ground after Armenia’s constitutional court upheld the legality of the protocols last month but underlined that they could not contradict Yerevan’s official position that the alleged Armenian genocide must be internationally recognized.
Turkey accused Yerevan of trying to rewrite and set conditions on the deals. Armenia’s president and foreign minister have warned that the rapprochement is under threat of collapse.
Richard Giragosian, head of the Armenian Center for National and International Studies (ACNIS), argues that Turkey’s objection to the Constitutional court’s ruling is “weak.”
Underlining that even Moscow and Washington, who are usually at odds on a number of issues, agreed that the normalization process between Armenia and Turkey should move ahead, Girogosian also recalled that both Moscow and Washington have warned Turkey that it should not link it to the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, a territorial dispute between Armenia and Turkey’s neighbor Azerbaijan.
The reconciliation process is complicated by Ankara’s insistence that normalizing Turkish-Armenian ties depends on a resolution on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict favoring Azerbaijan.
“In case of a failure, the [Armenian hard-line] opposition will be justified. Even moderates will no longer trust Turkey,” Giragosian told Today’s Zaman.
Tevan Poghosyan, executive director of the Armenia-based International Center for Human Development (ICHD), accused Turkey of running away from the normalization process.
What matters is the fact that Armenia’s constitutional court upheld the legality of the protocols, Poghosyan told Today’s Zaman, while describing Turkey’s objections as “artificial.”
Suggesting that Russia, the US and the European Union also believe that Turkey’s objections are not righteous, Poghosyan added: “This situation shows that Turkey has been playing. Didn’t Turkey at the time recognize Armenia according to the Declaration of Independence?”
Poghosyan was referring to the fact that the heart of the matter for Ankara is the court’s reference to Armenia’s Declaration of Independence, which states, “The Republic of Armenia stands in support of the task of achieving international recognition of the 1915 Genocide in Ottoman Turkey and Western Armenia.”
The fifth paragraph of the Armenian court’s ruling says that the protocols “cannot be interpreted or applied” in a way that would contradict the provisions of the preamble to Armenia’s constitution and the requirements of paragraph 11 of its declaration of independence.
Last week, James Holmes, a retired US ambassador and the president and chief executive officer of the American-Turkish Council (ATC), also suggested that Turkey would be the party that circles in Washington will hold responsible if efforts by Ankara and Yerevan to normalize their relations fail.
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