YEREVAN. - The closed Armenian-Turkish border still remains a major headache for Turkish authorities. Certainly, the diagnosis of this pain does not lead to much-touted conception of “zero problems with neighbors”, it rather appears a direct obstacle on the way to EU. 

For the entire year the experts accurately "blamed" the election campaign in Turkey for the obvious setbacks in Armenian-Turkish process, however, now there seems to be no room left for this kind of excuse. Parliamentary elections of June 12 ended with a very impressive victory of political force leaded by Erdogan: Justice and Development Party received twice as many votes as the main opposition Republican People‘s Party. 

According to Director of Oriental Studies Institute of Armenian National Academy of Sciences, turkologist Ruben Safrastyan, one should not hope for resumption of Armenian-Turkish protocols process in connection with the victory of Justice and Development Party. 

“There are no prerequisites that after the victory in parliamentary elections Turkish ruling party will resume the ratification process of Armenian-Turkish protocols. In the pre-election period anti-Armenian rhetoric and freezing of protocols ratification process were used as campaign elements and now the ruling party will not change its positions on the matter,” said Safrastyan to Armenian News-NEWS.am.

In any case, it is time for Turkish old-new leadership to make steps. Official Yerevan has demonstrated loyalty to the promise of normalization of relations with Ankara without preconditions, while Turkey allowed itself to be led by Azerbaijan, failing the West launched mechanism of strengthening its role in South Caucasus.

Soon Erdogan will have to answer a number of serious challenges, inter alia whether it is ready to take action for implementation of the "zero problems with neighbors" concept after gaining majority in the parliament. Otherwise, the problems seem only to increase so far...