Serzh Sargsyan does not believe that Turkey's membership in NATO makes him more predictable

PanARMENIAN.Net - "NATO and the European Union are turning a blind eye to Turkey's long-running blockade of our borders. Ankara's refusal to open land routes is costing the small, landlocked state a third of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Europeans are shy over these issues. They love to talk about human rights, about democratic values but it's much easier to talk rather than to implement anything," Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan stated in an interview to Reuters.



Reuters reminds that "Turkey shut its borders to Christian Armenia in 1993 to protest against the capture by Armenian forces of territory inside Azerbaijan, Ankara's historic Muslim ally, during fighting over the Nagorno Karabakh region. Ankara says it will not reopen its frontier until Armenia reaches a peace agreement with Azerbaijan".



The blockade, coupled with similar measures by Azerbaijan, means Armenia has to route its trade through its land border with Georgia, or over treacherous mountain passes that link it to Iran. Those difficulties greatly increase costs.



S. Sargsyan said Armenia wants to resume relations with Turkey without preconditions and would not obstruct Turkey's desire to join the EU because this might make Ankara "more predictable".



"Although NATO officials tell us that Turkey is predictable as it's a member of NATO, I don't believe it because even before our blockade Turkey was a member of NATO when it occupied Cyprus," the Prime Minister of Armenia added.



Reuters also underlines that Armenia and Turkey have a long history of enmity, arising from the killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians under the Ottoman empire in 1915-17.



"Armenians and some European nations describe the deaths as genocide. Turkey says they were part of a partisan conflict during World War One. It is a crime in Turkey to refer to the killings as a genocide," Reuters reports.