Turkey’s position is not just unconstructive, but even destructive both in the viewpoint of this conflict and normalization of Armenia-Turkey relations, Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said in an interview with Russia Today.

“You know that it was initiated by the Armenia’s President to start the process of normalizing Armenia-Turkey relations. Yes, we started the process; we conducted negotiations and reached the stage of signing protocols, having agreed with the Turkish side that we were doing it without any preconditions. But after protocols were signed, Turkey could not bring itself to observing one of the major principles of international law, which was born together with diplomacy – the pacta sunt servanda principle, meaning that all the agreements are to be implemented,” he noted.

Minister Nalbandian stressed that Armenia and Turkey signed the protocols in the presence of Switzerland, Russia, the United States, France, as well as members of the European Union and the Council of Europe. And then the Turkish side has got back to the same preconditions it was presenting before the start of this process, the preconditions keeping normalization of Armenia-Turkey relations at a deadlock.

“What are those preconditions? First, it’s an attempt to link the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement with Armenia-Turkey relations. Russia, the US and France – in the mediators of the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement – repeatedly made statements. The attempts to link those two processes would harm both of them. The Turkish side is pretending that it does not see or hear what the international community is saying,” he said.  

The second point, Foreign Minister considers, is the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. “When we started this process, we said that genocide recognition by Turkey is not a precondition for normalization of our relations despite the fact that Turkey has been denying Armenian genocide for 95 years. But this cannot be Turkey’s precondition to Armenia,” he added.

Edward Nalbanidan said Armenia has been emphasizing it will never question either the fact of Genocide, or the importance of its international recognition. “We told Turkey, the intermediaries and all the countries supporting the process of normalization of Armenia-Turkey relations about it. Unfortunately Turkey has returned to the language of preconditions that was used at the beginning of the process.  By doing so it took a counterproductive position both in settling the Armenia-Turkey relations and the settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh issue, because as I have mentioned before, the international community is saying that linking these two processes may affect the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement,” he stated.