Armenian diplomacy not to allow Turkey to take broker's role in Karabakh process

PanARMENIAN.Net - Turkey will make every possible effort to intervene in Karabakh settlement process, but Armenian diplomacy should do its best to prevent that, political scientist, YSU Professor Alexander Manasyan finds.



"Armenian-Turkish relations concern only two states. Of course, Turkey will try to get advantage of Protocols, but we must not allow that to happen," he told today a news conference in Yerevan.



At that, he expressed belief that there will be no final document on Karabakh by 2010.



The Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR) is a de facto independent state located in the South Caucasus, bordering on Azerbaijan to the north and east, Iran to the south, and Armenia to the west.



After the Soviet Union established control over the area, in 1923 it formed the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) within the Azerbaijan SSR. In the final years of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan launched an ethnic cleansing which resulted in the Karabakh War that was fought from 1991 to 1994.



Since the ceasefire in 1994, most of Nagorno Karabakh and several regions of Azerbaijan around it (the security zone) remain under the control of Nagorno Karabakh defense army.



Armenia and Azerbaijan have since been holding peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group.



The protocols aimed at normalization of bilateral ties and opening of the common border between Armenia and Turkey were signed in Zurich by Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian and his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu on October 10, 2009, after a series of diplomatic talks held through Swiss mediation.