“Armenia and Turkey will sign the protocol on normalization of the relations on October 10,” said the Turkish prime-minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the FrancePress without any other comments. However the foreign media published a lot of information about this meeting yesterday. The FrancePress refers to diplomatic sources from Turkey and writes that the protocols will be signed by the foreign ministers of Armenia and Turkey. Definitely the foreign minister of Switzerland will take part in this event too. According to the Neue Zurcher Zeitung newspaper published in Switzerland, it is possible that the US secretary of state Hillary Clinton may take part in the event too, who has made an announcement saying that it is time to stop the status-quo of Karabakh. Specifically Clinton said the following during a meeting with the Azeri foreign minister Elmar Mamediarov: “The status-quo in the Armenian-Azeri conflict is unacceptable for the US administration”. The US president has said during a meeting with the Turkish PM Erdogan that the development of the Armenian-Turkish relations is positive and it is very important for the entire region. We can continue citing announcements of the recent days concerning the Armenian-Turkish relations and the issue of Karabakh, but the problem is that these announcements were not published as a result of meetings with Armenian officials, i.e. they don’t speak of a pro-Armenian solution. In fact there is nothing dangerous in such announcements, but the problem is that the announcements show not only the commitment of the interested countries and international organizations to settle the conflict but they want to drive the process till the end. While Erdogan would announce the date of signing the protocols, the OSCE MG co-chairmen announced that they were petitioning the two parties to be constructive in their announcements in this important phase of negotiations. What does the Armenian party think about this? The foreign affairs ministry spokesperson has neither rejected nor approved Erdogan’s announcement concerning signing the protocols. In fact they are keeping silence. “We will inform when there is clear information about the next phases of the process,” said the president’s spokesman Samvel Pharmanyan concerning Erdogan’s announcement. It is strange that the government is keeping silence in a moment when they meanwhile allege that the issues of Karabakh conflict settlement and Armenian-Turkish relations are essential for Armenia.
