Armenia – Turkey: Turkish preconditions freeze protocols
The European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy welcomes with overwhelming satisfaction, the decision of Armenia to freeze the ratification of the protocols signed with Turkey by the Armenian Parliament.
One year after the beginning of the process, the Armenian President, Serge Sarkissian, while reaffirming his attachment with the normalisation of relations with Turkey, reported the absence in Turkey of a favourable environment, and of leaders ready to engage in this process. Indeed, the Turkish leaders had put additional conditions, without agreement between the two countries, to the ratification of these protocols, while thus hoping to keep Armenia under pressure.
“The first condition to succeed such negotiations is the bona fide of it’s contents: however, we had already observed an obvious imbalance: Armenia clearly expected for this situation to be normalised, and Turkey, whom we denounced as having leaders with a serious lack of sincerity” declared Hilda Tchoboian, chairwoman of the European Armenian Federation.
The European Armenian Federation recalls that on April 6th, Catherine Ashton, the EU High representative for foreign affairs and security policy affirmed the EU support for the protocols by indicating, in accordance with the agreements, that the latter should be applied with no preconditions.
“The conditions of a true agreement between the two countries were distorted in advance: Armenia had to pay too high a price for the lifting of the Turkish blockade,” added Hilda Tchoboian. “This decision confirms that Armenia had been duped by Turkey who wants to maintain Armenia as a neighbour hostage”.
The Federation recalls that with this attitude, Turkey is infringing the Copenhagen criteria, which stipulate that the applicant countries should establish good relations with their neighbouring countries.
“We invite the European Union to take note of Turkish responsibility for the failure of these agreements; and to take effective and rapid measures for the lifting of the blockade on Armenia,” concluded Hilda Tchoboian.
