“US President Barack Obama, in his statement commemorating the start of forced deportation of Armenians by the Ottoman government on April 24, 1915, avoided, as he did last year, the use of the word &‘genocide’ to describe the events. He did the right thing, mainly for two reasons,” reads the article by Sahin Alpay in Turkish Zaman daily.

“Firstly, because &‘genocide’ declarations by leaders and resolutions by parliaments of third countries do not help the people of Turkey face the question of what happened to the Ottoman Armenians. Such statements and resolutions are exploited by nationalist politicians to suppress the domestic debate and scholarly research on the question, which has been flourishing during at least the last five years. The people of Turkey at large who have been kept ignorant by authorities of the mass deportation and killings of Ottoman Armenians during World War I, in retaliation for Armenian nationalist groups seeking independence from the empire, require more time to reach a sound and objective understanding of what really happened,” the source reads.

“Secondly, the range of international problems, especially those that relate to the Middle East, necessitate close cooperation between the governments of Turkey and the US. Surveys indicate that the highly negative attitudes toward US policies in the region among the Turkish public since the invasion of Iraq have only partially been mollified by the election of President Obama and his visit to Turkey last year. It would not have been reasonable for President Obama to make a statement that would further fan anti-US sentiment in the Turkish public opinion,” the daily says.

“How then has the ratification of the protocols gotten stuck? There is no doubt that both sides have made mistakes in the process. The mistake of the Armenian government was to submit the protocols to the constitutional court for approval, which ruled that the documents were in accordance with the Armenian Constitution and 1990 Declaration of Independence, which states that &‘The Republic of Armenia stands in support of the task of achieving international recognition of the 1915 Genocide in Ottoman Turkey and Western Armenia.’ The Turkish government viewed this ruling as adding new conditionality to the protocols, demanding guarantees that it did not do so,” the source reads.

“Thomas de Waal, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, points to the fact that the Turkish side &‘hoped to see progress on the Karabakh dispute in the months after the Zurich ceremony, giving them political cover to ratify the protocols.’ He goes on to state: &‘Turkish officials, perhaps as a result of undue US assurances, had an overly optimistic impression of how well the Karabakh peace negotiations were going. When the officials learned in December 2009 that the talks were deadlocked, they found themselves boxed in,’ the source says.

”Is there, then, a chance for a breakthrough in the Karabakh negotiations that would open the way for the ratification of the protocols by Turkey? Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had declared in Baku, five months prior to the signing of the protocols: “The occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh is a cause, and the closure of the border is an effect. Without the occupation ending, the gates will not be opened.” Why, then, did the Turkish side sign the protocols, which did not made any reference to the resolution of Nagorno-Karabakh dispute?" the daily informs.

“As an ardent supporter of reconciliation in the Turkey-Azerbaijan-Armenia triangle, I strongly hope that Huseynov’s expectations materialize,” the source concludes.