In a recent interview given to the World Politics Review senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment Thomas De Vaal said that the main reason of freezing the Armenia-Turkey relations is the issue of Karabakh.
“Turkey was insisting on linking the improvement process with the issue of Karabakh, even though it was not written in the initial protocols signed on October 10, 2009,” he said and mentioned that the settlement of Karabakh conflict is not so important for Turkey as the relations with its Turkish ally Azerbaijan. “Unfortunately at present this Minsk process is in a deadlock. This time the Armenian party does not want to accept the latest version of Madrid principles, while in the past the principles were not accepted by Azerbaijan. But there are deeper difficulties in the talks. It proceeds through a narrower path and it cannot stimulate the settlement of the bigger conflict. Almost there is no process which would take place in parallel with the talks and would involve the two societies. The international community does not support the efforts of Russia, France and the US,” said Thomas De Vaal.