Petition to open Turkish-Armenian border started on White House website

YEREVAN, January 8. /ARKA/. A petition to call upon Turkey to open the borders with Armenia at least for the Syrian refugees was started on the U.S. President Obama administration web page on January 5. 

“We petition Obama administration to call the government of Turkey to open its border with Armenia for refugees from Syria. More than 60.000 people have been killed in the war in Syria. 500.000 refugees have escaped from war and death... But many millions are unable to do that. There are 200.000 ethnic Armenians living in Syria and most of them want to escape to Armenia where they can feel safe, comfortable, find a job, a place to live and go to schools,” the petition states.

“Тhe road from Syria to Armenia goes through Turkey which closed its border with Armenia in 1993. It creates a big problem for Armenian refugees. Thus, we are kindly asking to call Turkey to open the land border with Armenia (at least, for refugees) without any preconditions. There shouldn't be closed borders in the 21-st century.”

Armenia and Turkey have no diplomatic relations. The border between the two countries was closed in 1993 at Ankara’s initiative. Relations between Armenia and Turkey remain tense because of Ankara’s biased stance on Karabakh problem and its painful reaction to Armenia’s efforts to obtain worldwide recognition of the Armenian Genocide. 

Process of normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations started in 2008 by the initiative of the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan. On October 10, 2009 Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Turkey signed two protocols in Zurich “On the regulation of diplomatic relations” and “On the development of mutual relations” which should have been ratified by the parliaments of both countries.

But on April 22, 2010 Sargsyan signed a decree on the termination of the process of ratification of Armenian-Turkish protocols announcing that Turkey is not ready to continue the launched process. Ratification process of documents by Turkish Parliament is frozen. --0--