Russia mulls annulling 1921 Treaty of Brotherhood with Turkey

PanARMENIAN.Net - Members of Russia’s State Duma have sent a letter to the country’s leadership and the Foreign Ministry proposing to denounce the Moscow Treaty of Friendship and Brotherhood, TASS reports citing Izvestia daily.

Valery Rashkin and Sergei Obukhov from the Communist Party faction propose annulling the treaty, signed on March 16, 1921, by the government of Soviet Russia (RSFSR) and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey.

"We should consider a legal review of all Russian-Turkish agreements that are unfavorable for our country and its allies. Ankara must understand what the escalation of conflict could be fraught with," Obukhov told Izvestia.

Obukhov noted that "two of the three South Caucasian republics - Georgia and Armenia - did not recognize the treaty considering it unfair. We should realize that in 1921 the Bolshevik (Soviet) government was literally hanging by a single thread, with foreign intervention and civil war continuing. Under those circumstances, Soviet Russia could not impose more favorable terms of the treaty on Turkey," the parliamentarian said.

The newspaper notes that under the treaty "the former Kars region and the southern part of the former Batumi region that were part of the Russian Empire since 1878 as well as former Surmalin district of Erivan Governorate that formed part of the Russian Empire since 1828 with Mount Ararat were ceded to Turkey."