Armenia and Turkey are as far from each other as 2 years ago

PanARMENIAN.Net - As the least interested party in this project, Armenia did everything in her power. She sent the Protocols to the Constitutional Court to determine their conformity with the Constitution. President Serzh Sargsyan started an unprecedented tour to the Diaspora to find out the opinion of the majority of Armenians. In short, our country did its darnedest in this matter, at the same time withstanding the pressure from the United States, which was highly interested in the execution of her project. Washington believed and still believes that normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations will become the victory of the State Department and President Obama, against the general background of diplomatic and economic failures that have recently rocked America. This is the cost of an “Arab spring”, which the U.S. first ignored, then found nothing better than to intervene in the civil war in Libya, if you call a spade a spade. Presently, the situation in the Middle East is not favorable for opening any borders, especially the Armenian-Turkish one. The reason is not the position of Baku, which perceives everything related to Armenia as an attack on her. The reason is the constant bloody war going on between the Turkish government and the Kurdish population of the country, living right near the border with Armenia. Even if we imagine that the border is opened, the following steps can be calculated in advance: Turkey will immediately declare that Armenians support the Kurdish rebels and will start a near-boundary operation, as it is the case in Northern Iraq. There is no guarantee that Turkey will respect the sovereign territory of Armenia and will not start chasing the Kurdish rebels. And this is just one of the constraints that is not loudly spoken about, but which exists. Another quite serious problem is the economic expansion. If with the border closed, Armenia is flooded with Turkish textiles, building materials, and household appliances, it’s awesome to imagine what will happen when the cargo vans spend on the road to Armenia only 4 hours, as contrasted to today’s 15... In this respect, very educational is the example of Georgia, where Turkish companies eradicated the local manufacturers.

Armenia must realize that Turkish military bases are positioned along the perimeter of the border, targeting, naturally, the Kurds and Armenians. This is the reality that shouldn’t be ignored. And all that staff about how advantageous to Yerevan the open border is if Turkey joins the EU (because Europe will become closer) is nothing but empty rhetoric and unwillingness to see the danger. Talk also proceeds from the false premise about the possible membership of Turkey in the EU. However, no one is expecting her in the EU, at least as long as French President is Nicolas Sarkozy. European countries seem to have finally understood what will happen to Europe if the Muslims, mainly Turks, unrestrictedly flow there.

Nevertheless, the interested parties continue their attempts to revive the Armenian-Turkish process in the hope that the countries will still come to an agreement. And the insurmountable obstacles – non-recognition of the Armenian Genocide and interference in the Karabakh conflict – are not even taken into account. Yerevan and Ankara, and all the other participants of signing the Protocols, are well aware that Turkey should “reconcile itself to its own history”, otherwise normalization of relations shall become almost illusive. In addition, the government of Erdogan has so much spoken about “solidarity with the Azerbaijani people in the Karabakh issue” that there’s nowhere to retreat. The only thing that can move the process off the ground, in our view, is transformation of the Greater Middle East, in which there would be no place for Erdogan.