1000х90.jpg (78 KB)

Armenian-Turkish protocols declared null and void - Yerkir Media

Armenpress 16:41, 1 March, 2018

YEREVAN, MARCH 1, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan has declared the Armenian-Turkish protocols null and void during a National Security Council session in the Presidential Palace, presidential spokesperson Vladimir Hakobyan told Yerkir Media. 

In 2008, at the initiative of the President of Armenia a new phase of normalization of the Armenian-Turkish relations began, which resulted in the Armenian and Turkish ministers of foreign affairs signing the “Protocol on the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Turkey” and “Protocol on development of relations between of the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Turkey” on October 10, 2009 in Zurich.

However, after the signature, Turkey abruptly changed its position and rejected to implement the agreements on the normalization of the relations within a reasonable timeframe and without any preconditions, linking the ratification of the Protocols in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey to the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue.

Taking into account the situation created by Turkey, as well as the call of the Political Council of the parties-members of the ruling coalition, on April 22, 2010 the President of the Republic of Armenia signed a decree on the suspension of the process of ratifications of the Protocols. On February 16, 2015 the protocols were called back from the National Assembly according to the decree signed by President of the Republic of Armenia.

Speaking at the UN General Assembly on September 20, 2017 President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan said:

“The leadership of Turkey is mistaken if they think that those documents can be held hostage forever and ratified only at the most opportune occasion from their very point of view. The Protocols were negotiated in the existing circumstances in order to find solutions to the actually existing issues. Armenia will declare those two Protocols null and void since they continuously lacked any positive progress towards their implementation. We will enter the spring of 2018 without those, as our experience has demonstrated, futile Protocols.”

 

English –translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan



About agency

Address: Armenia, 22 Saryan Street, Yerevan, 0002, Armenpress
Tel.: +374 11 539818
E-mail: contact@armenpress.am