Turkey not to give up normalization with Armenia – Cavusoglu

“We do not have the luxury to give up. Not this year, not afterwards,” Cavusoglu said in delivering a speech at Carnegie Center in Washington, RIA Novosti reported referring to Anadolu. 

The minister expressed his regrets that the earlier statements of condolence by the president and the prime-minister of his country on the deaths of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey in 1915 were left with no response from the Armenian authorities. 

According to Cavusoglu, Turkey will continue to work for a framework that both addresses the historic aspect of the problem and also helps solve the Nagorno-Karabagh issue, Cavusoglu said. 

There are currently no diplomatic relations established between Turkey and Armenia: official Ankara closed the border in 1993. The uneasy relationship between the countries is caused particularly by Ankara’s support to Azerbaijan on Karabakh problem and Turkey’s overreaction to international recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Empire. 

Some reconciliation in the relations started in autumn 2008 initiated by Armenia’s president Serzh Sargsyan. Foreign ministers of Armenia and Turkey signed protocols about establishing diplomatic relations in Zurich on October 10 2009 to be ratified by the parliaments. 

On April 22 2010 Armenia’s president Sargsyan suspended the ratification process saying the political majority in the National Assembly considered statements from the Turkish side unacceptable, “specifically those by Prime Minister Erdogan, who has again made the ratification of the Armenia-Turkey protocols by the Turkish parliament directly dependent on a resolution over Nagorno-Karabakh.” 

In a statement issued on February 16, president Sargsyan said he had asked parliament speaker Galust Sahakian to return the protocol to him since "the Turkish government has no political will, distorts the spirit and letter of the protocols, and continues its policy of setting preconditions." --0--