“The regulation of the Armenian-Turkish relations requires the will of the heads of the two states; in order to ratify the protocols it is necessary to preclude the actions of the Diaspora and jointly speak about the Minsk Group process,” according to the Turkish Sabah newspaper the Premier of Turkey Erdogan should pass on the Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan. Especially the last two messages are quite worrying because after signing the protocols Turkey is trying to bring up the Genocide and the NKR conflicts as preconditions to the process. It seems that Turkey has transitioned to more serious pressuring methods. Erdogan is also going to submit his recommendations to President Barack Obama, according to which the US should impose pressure for the adoption of the Madrid Principles; should play its role in the NKR conflict resolution and regulation of Armenia-Turkey relations. Turkey cannot re-cede Azerbaijan. So these are the demands of Turkey not only to us but also the US. In this regard yesterday during the NA session a member of the Heritage faction Larisa Alaverdyan asked a question to the Foreign Affairs Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandyan. Also, at the request of the Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan yesterday the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan and Edward Nalbandyan accepted the special envoy of Turkey Feridun Sinirlioglu. “By reading the Sabah we shouldn’t believe that such things exist. Sinirlioglu passed on to the President the written message of Erdogan. And these messages in no way are linked to the information published by Sabah. The Turkish-Armenian side ensured us that they wish to continue the rapprochement process. The Armenian side has re-confirmed its standpoint, which match with the expectations and policies of the international community. They expect practical sides from the Turkish end. Let me also add that he has passed on the suggestion of Erdogan to organize a meeting with the President in DC,” responded Nalbandyan. Let us remember that recently Sargsyan has made quite ambiguous statements regarding the NKR conflict resolution. First he said that for the sake of the NKR independence Armenia is willing to return the liberated territories. Later he said that the self-identification issue of the NKR is irrefutable. “My worry is that these envoys, these statements and these articles are never published groundlessly and are at least linked with each other,” noted Alaverdyan. During the rally held several days ago Levon Ter-Petrosyan stated that the government and Sargsyan are willing to treat the 5 liberated territories to Azerbaijan on a plate. It means return to Azerbaijan the territories by leaving the rest of the key principles, including the NKR conflict unsolved. The journalists have tried to find out whether there is an agreement to return the liberated territories. Or what are the revised Principles of Madrid? Nalbandyan responded that the main question of the negotiations is the NKR conflict. “Not only Armenia but also the co-chairs of the Minks Group realize that the key issue is the NKR conflict resolution, the self-identification issue of the NKR people. Without the solution of these issues the rest of the issues will hardly find solution,” once again repeated Nalbandyan. But at the next moment he added, “Today on the table of negotiations we have the Madrid Principles, which were first presented in November 2007. This is the basis of negotiations.” Let us recall that in the summer of the last year the Presidents of the three co-chairs’ countries revealed the main 6 provisions of the Madrid Pact, where the NKR status was the fourth. The first one was the return of the neighboring territories of the NKR to Azerbaijan. And it clearly read what kind of status the NKR was going to have after that. Moreover, they are also clearly discussing the possibility of conducting a referendum after the return of the Azerbaijani refugees to the NKR. In this case it is not excluded that the possible referendum may be held at the time when the Azerbaijani occupy the majority of the NKR population. After this it turns out that the Madrid Principles basically solve the issue of the return of the liberated territories by jeopardizing the status of the NKR. When the RA President or the foreign affairs minister state that for them the key issue is the status of the NKR but afterwards add that the negotiations are based on the Madrid Principles they make contradictive statements. By the way, the Armenian people were introduced to these provisions by foreign media outlets. And when Nalbandyan suggests that we should not build our opinion on Sabah or some other foreign media means it would be right to remember that Armenians receive their basic information on the results of negotiations from the foreign media, especially when Sargsyan passes on his messages to the Armenian people via foreign media outlets.
