Armenia-Turkey: whether signed agreement will be ratified?

PanARMENIAN.Net - On Saturday, October 10, Armenian and Turkish Foreign Ministers signed "landmark" accord to normalize relations and re-establish diplomatic ties. Deal was concluded through the intermediary of U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton. British media accepted such news with extremely cautious optimism.

The agreement, the culmination of more than a year of intensive diplomacy, will commit both countries to reopen their land border and restore diplomatic ties, Robert Tait of Guardian reports. But in an indication of the many pitfalls that lie ahead of its implementation, the ceremony was marred by a three-hour delay due to last-minute disagreements on the wording of statements, forcing the American secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, to engage in intense discussions to salvage a deal, he further notes.



According to a Financial Times correspondent, "Armenians' anger at Turkey's denial that the 1915 killings were genocide, mean each government faces big obstacles to ratifying and implementing the agreement - even though each should technically be able to win a parliamentary vote".



Armenians who want to break out of their landlocked and poor economy are looking for normal relations with Turkey while Turkey, a member of NATO, seeks to become an oil-and-gas corridor connecting energy-rich Russia and the Caspian with Europe and the Middle East, The Christian Science Monitor says in an editorial article. Article expresses uncertainty about Protocol ratification given that disputes over Armenian Genocide are still in frozen state. CSM forecasts that "nationalist forces in Turkey and Armenia will try to derail the agreement, and prevent ratification". However, if documents are ratified, "that might point the way to resolving other so-called 'intractable' disputes in the Caucasus, and perhaps even the Turk-Greek problem over a divided Cyprus," says the CSM reporter. In that case, author further notes, "it will take skilled leadership on the parts of Gul and Sargsyan to sail past these political shoals - and perhaps all the way to Oslo to collect the next Nobel."