Edward Nalbandian: Turkey pretends not to hear the voice of international community

PanARMENIAN.Net - Turkey’s position regarding the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and normalization of relations with Armenia is not just unconstructive, but even destructive, Armenian Foreign Minister said

“We started the reconciliation process; we conducted negotiations and reached the stage of signing protocols, having agreed with the Turkish side that we were doing it without any preconditions. But after protocols were signed, Turkey could not bring itself to observing one of the major principles of international law, which was born together with diplomacy – the pacta sunt servanda principle, meaning that all the agreements are to be implemented,” Edward Nalbandian said in an interview with Russia Today.

“We reached those agreements and signed them in the presence of Switzerland, Russia, the United States, France, as well as members of the European Union and the Council of Europe. And then the Turkish side has got back to the same preconditions it was presenting before the start of this process, the preconditions keeping normalization of Armenia-Turkey relations at a deadlock. What are those preconditions? First, it’s an attempt to link the Nagorno Karabakh settlement with Armenia-Turkey relations. Russia, the US and France – as the mediators – repeatedly made statements The attempts to link those two processes would harm both of them. The Turkish side is pretending that it does not see or hear what the international community is saying. The second issue is the recognition of the Armenian genocide When we started this process, we said that genocide recognition by Turkey is not a precondition for normalization of our relations despite the fact that Turkey has been denying Armenian genocide for 95 years,” he said.

“Unfortunately Turkey has returned to the language of preconditions that was used at the beginning of the process. By doing so it took a counterproductive position both in settling the Armenia-Turkey relations and the Karabakh process, because as I have mentioned before, the international community is saying that linking these two processes may affect the Karabakh conflict settlement,” the Minister concluded.