YEREVAN. – The withdrawal of Armenia-Turkey Protocols from Grand National Assembly de facto proves the failure of normalization between Armenia and Turkey by Ankara, expert in Turkish studies Ruben Melkonyan told a press conference on Wednesday.

Despite the Protocols were withdrawn from legislative framework, they still remain on the agenda of Turkey’s political life, he noted. “The Turkish government has not yet revoked Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s signature. Consequently, protocols lack validity and were declared invalid, but they remain in Turkey’s political life,” Melkonyan noted.

The expert underlined Turkey once again showed its non-constructive attitude towards Armenia-Turkey reconciliation process, unlike Armenia, which proved to be a reliable partner. The expert stressed at the moment there are no prerequisites for Armenia-Turkey accords to be again included in the agenda of the Turkish Grand National Assembly. It is conditioned by the fact that the possibility of external pressure on the authorities is minimal. To date, the agenda of international community and international agencies is full of many other problems and Armenian-Turkish relations are sidelined, Melkonyan said.

As reported earlier, on October 10, 2009, in Zurich, Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Armenia and Turkey signed the “Protocol on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations” and “Protocol for the development of bilateral relations”, which needed to be ratified by the parliaments of the two countries.

However, on December 7, 2009, Turkey linked the Armenian-Turkish process to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. During a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Ankara would not ratify the Armenian-Turkish protocols without resolution of the Karabakh conflict. On April 22, 2010, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan signed a decree suspending the ratification process.