Edward Nalbandian: Turkey has effectively blocked Protocols ratification for 9 months

PanARMENIAN.Net - RA Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian stated that the Armenian-Turkish relations were in a deadlock, when the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan invited his Turkish counterpart President Gul to Armenia.

“This visionary initiative, which met a positive response by the Turkish President, allowed us to start the process and after several months of hard negotiations, we made a significant step towards normalization of the Armenian-Turkish relations by signing the two Protocols on the establishment of diplomatic relations, having the common border opened and development of bilateral relations, in Zurich last year,” Minister Nalbandian said in an interview with Profil Austrian journal.

“After the signing of the Protocols, Armenia has started the ratification process having gone through several procedures, the decision of the Constitutional Court, a month in advance of the statutory deadline announcing the Protocols in line with the country’s basic law. In early February the President of Armenia announced in his speech at Chatham House in London that the Armenian parliament, where the President enjoys comfortable majority, will ratify the Protocols as soon as Turkey does. The Turkish side, having easier ratification procedures has taken practically no steps for that purpose, except from sending the Protocols to the Parliament, and has effectively blocked the ratification process for 9 months now,” he said.

The Minister continued saying, “Turkey is trying to find baseless reasons for protracting the process, independent of its logic. At what point Armenia blocked normalization? No one could point out. All the Armenian steps on normalization process were commended by the whole international community. Even the decision on suspension of the ratification process was met by understanding and applauded. The main and only reason for the suspension of the process is resumption of the Turkish attempt to link the normalization of relations with other issues. After the signing of the protocols, Turkey backtracked and started again to speak in the language of preconditions, for instance attempting to link the Armenian-Turkish normalization process to Nagorno Karabakh conflict resolution. Not only Armenia, but also the mediators, supporters of this process, the whole international community, have publicly made it clear that Nagorno Karabakh conflict resolution has no linkage to the Armenian-Turkish normalization process. And that such a linkage could damage both processes.”