The California Courier: Armenia, Turkey not to back down their positions

PanARMENIAN.Net -
The international community is no longer buying the endless Turkish excuses for refusing to ratify the Protocols, says The California Courier editor Harut Sasunyan in his regular column.



“Armenian officials, who naively believed that Turkey would open its border and establish diplomatic relations with Armenia, are beginning to question the Turks’ sincerity and contemplating the possibility of the Protocols’ collapse,” he wrote in a recent article.



Now the blame game starts, says the author, asking “Whose fault is it that the Protocols are not being ratified?”



According to him, “The Turks are the ones to be blamed for deceiving the international community all along. It was never the intention of the Turkish leaders to carry out their publicly stated plans to normalize relations with Armenia. They were simply engaged in a ploy to obstruct what they believed to be Pres. Obama’s solemn pledge to recognize the Armenian Genocide, and to facilitate Turkey’s admission to the European Union (EU), since open borders are one of the key prerequisites for EU membership.”



“Without taking a single positive step, Turkey created the false impression of reconciling with Armenia, thereby dissuading Pres. Obama from using the term "Genocide" in his April 24 statement. Turkish leaders also succeeded in exploiting the Protocols to generate favorable worldwide publicity for their country,” he further notes.



At this juncture, he says, neither Armenia nor Turkey is willing to back down from its recalcitrant position.



Should Turkey’s leaders remove Artsakh and the Constitutional Court as preconditions, they would risk not only losing Azerbaijan as an ally, but seriously jeopardize their party’s majority in next year’s parliamentary election. Similarly, Armenia’s leaders can neither give up Artsakh nor "correct" the ruling of the Constitutional Court. No amount of outside pressure can therefore force the two governments to reverse course. That is why I believe the Protocols cannot be resuscitated, Sasunyan adds in conclusion.