President: pragmatism and stability suggest that you should not have problems with your neighbors

YEREVAN, January 20. /ARKA/. Pragmatism and stability suggest that you should not have problems with your neighbors, especially if one of them is a large country, demonstrating special behavior in Syria, in the eastern part of the Mediterranean and in many other places, Armenian President Armen Sarkissian said in an interview with Sky News Arabia. In his words, in such a case there is no other way but dialogue.

Sarkissian recalled that Armenia and Turkey once tried to normalize their relations in October 2009, "even signed protocols in Zurich."

Sarkissian said in 2009 he did not believe that the efforts would succeed for several reasons. One was that Azerbaijan was not involved on the Turkish side in those talks. Armenia had problems with Azerbaijan and would not reach an agreement with Turkey without Azerbaijan’s accord.

On the Armenian side its vast Diaspora was not represented. The Armenian Diaspora was largely shaped as a result of the Armenian Genocide committed by the government of Turkey in 1915-1923.

Prior to signing the Zurich protocols, then Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan met with Diaspora representatives from October 1-7, 2009 visiting the largest Armenian communities abroad - Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Beirut, and the Russian Rostov-on-Don. The goal of his tour was to get acquainted with the Armenian Diaspora's position and approaches to the normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations.

Armen Sarkissian said in his interview with Sky News Arabia that although Armenia is a small country, but Armenians are spread all over the world, adding that there are as many Armenians living in the USA or Russia as in Armenia itself.

In this context, he said that the way to a stable future is through negotiations, but it is not just a dialogue between the two countries.

"In this case, you cannot ignore the history you went through. [...] You can't close your eyes or ignore the obvious in order to succeed," he explained.

Noting that the Armenian-Turkish negotiations are not going to be simple, Sarkissian expressed hope that one day Armenians and Turks will achieve success in this issue, ‘but to do so we must not ignore historical realities.’

"In order to succeed, we must be pragmatic to be able to build stable and sustainable relations between Armenia and Turkey, as well as in the region," the president summarized.

Although Turkey was one of the first countries to recognize Armenia’s independence from the former Soviet Union, the countries have no diplomatic ties and Turkey shut down their common border in 1993, in a show of solidarity with Azerbaijan which was locked in a conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Turkey also refuses to recognize the Armenian genocide, committed during 1915-1923 when an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were massacred by the Ottoman government. The overwhelming majority of historians widely view the event as genocide.

In 2009, Ankara and Yerevan reached an agreement in Zurich to establish diplomatic relations and to open their joint border, but Turkey later said it could not ratify the deal until Armenia withdrew from Nagorno-Karabakh.

In 2020, Turkey strongly backed Azerbaijan in the six-week conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh which ended with a Russia-brokered peace deal that saw Azerbaijan gain control of a significant part of Nagorno-Karabakh.

On January 14, 2022 the Deputy Speaker of Armenia’s National Assembly Ruben Rubinyan, appointed as Armenia’s special envoy to negotiate normalization of relations with Turkey, had the first meeting with his Turkish vis-a-vis- Serdar Kilic in Moscow.

The Armenian and Turkish foreign ministries said the first meeting was held in a positive and constructive atmosphere. -0-