"Washington is making every effort in order Ankara-Yerevan reconciliation process not to be stalled. Rapid start, marked by mutual visits of Turkish and Armenian presidents Abdullah Gul and Serzh Sargsyan to football matches between their national teams and called soccer diplomacy, was backed by signing the "Swiss Protocols", or "road map" over settlement of relations on October 10, 2009 in Zurich. According to the Protocols, Yerevan and Ankara are starting the political approximation, which in the short term will be crown by establishment full-fledged good-neighborly relations," Nezavisimaya Gazeta wrote.
However, according to the newspaper, local publics and conservative political circles were not ready to what seemed to be appropriate by political leaders of Turkey and Armenia. "In Turkey, there was an opinion that defrosting relations with Yerevan imply that Turkey’s strategic partner – Azerbaijan will become abandoned, with the unresolved Nagorno Karabakh problem.
The same view was expressed by official Baku, tightened its pricing policy on gas supplies to brotherly Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged to save a strategic partnership, making statements towards Yerevan, like, no normalization take place unless Armenia return to Azerbaijani jurisdiction Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent territories and unless Armenia abandon its international campaign on recognition of the 1915 Genocide in the Ottoman Empire. In response, Yerevan tightened its position and Armenia announced that its parliament ratifies the "Swiss Protocols" only after Turkish counterparts do that. In turn, the Turkish parliament "lost" the Swiss Protocols in one of its committees, "remembering" either Karabakh with adjacent territories separated from Azerbaijan, or a permanent campaign on the Armenian Genocide recognition, the article wrote.
Recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the parliament of Sweden resulted in Erdogan’s announcement about the halt of the Armenian-Turkish reconciliation. Armenia did not bat an eye and tried to boost the initiative, reminding to Barack Obama about his promise during the election campaign to recognize the Armenian Genocide, 95th anniversary of which will be marked on April 24 and 25.
"The international process of Genocide recognition became irreversible, many experts say in Yerevan. Such statements do not seem overoptimistic, if we take into account some serious events in Turkey. Several local historians, lawyers and jurists in Turkey in interviews to leading newspapers concurrently called on the authorities not to go against the flow and accept the facts of mass murder and expulsion of the Armenians started in the late XIX century and culminated in 1915, thus finishing that tragic page of the history of Turkish state. Unlike past years when such statement or confessions were severely punished by law, the scientists are free now. Like the mayor of Diyarbakır city Osman Baydemir, who at a regional conference brought a formal apology to the Armenian people, "almost half of the population of Diyarbakır before 1915 ", he said. He called upon Armenians to return to their homeland: "No apology can relieve this tragedy ... You were forced to leave, but be sure: not you - who lost, but we, those who left here. Because you have taken with you good fortune and peace".
This would be a foreign and local background of talks Erdogan will hold with Barack Obama and, perhaps, Serge Sargsyan on painful for Ankara issues. His threats and ultimatums have not proved to be too effective. And so it's possible that now, Erdogan after the stick will have to exercise the carrot policy," NG concluded.
