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 YEREVAN
(Combined Sources)—The Armenian Revolutionary Federation, in a
statement issued Tuesday, slammed the draft protocols for the
establishment and development of relations between Turkey and
Armenia, calling their provisions “dangerous.” The protocols
were issued Monday by the foreign ministries of the two
countries and Switzerland.
ARF Bureau member Hrant
Markarian denounced the protocols as “unacceptable,” in an
interview with RFE/RL.
“I regret that our
president is going to sign a document he has no right to sign,”
Markarian told RFE/RL. “In the next two months we will do
everything to inform the public about the essence of the
agreement and issues hidden in it,” he said.
Markarian told RFE/RL that
these concessions alone would not lead Ankara to reopen the
Turkish-Armenian border. “I think it is a bit naïve to expect
that state [Turkey] to subordinate Azerbaijan’s interests to its
relations with Armenia,” he said. “Maybe there is another,
hidden agreement whereby during the next two, three or six
months the Karabakh conflict will be ‘solved.’ So [that means]
all of Turkey’s three preconditions have been accepted.”
Upon the announcement of
the protocols, the ARF Bureau and the Supreme Council of Armenia
convened an emergency session and issued the following
statement:
On August 31, 2009
protocols on the establishment and development of relations
between the republics of Armenia and Turkey were officially
announced.
Armenia and Armenians
entered a new phase, which is encumbered with numerous threats
and danger.
It was about these very
concerns that the Armenian Revolutionary Federation continued to
warn from the onset of the political process by intermittently
expressing the following positions:
a. As neighboring states,
Armenia and Turkey are bound to take steps to normalize
relations. However, good neighborly relations can be established
between the two countries only when Turkey recognized the
Armenian Genocide and reestablishes the rights of the Armenian
people. The establishment of relations without preconditions and
lifting of the blockade were mere first steps.
b. The proposal by Armenia
to establish relations without preconditions can be deemed a
serious concession
c. It is unacceptable to
establish relations with Turkey at the expense of our
government’s sovereignty and viability, as well as the national
rights of our future generations.
Based on these principles,
the ARF on several occasions warned that Turkey is leveraging
the entire process to benefit its own interests (impeding the
international recognition of the Armenian Genocide effort, a
pro-Azeri resolution to the Nargorno-Karabakh conflict) and is
communicating with Armenia through obvious and veiled
preconditions.
It is already evident that
the published documents contain the well-known preconditions of
the Turkish side. That is, to call into question the veracity of
the Armenian Genocide and to invalidate the unwavering rights of
the Armenian people. Furthermore, immediately following the
release of the protocols, Turkey, through official statements,
reiterated its third precondition: it will not undertake any
steps that would contradict Azerbaijan’s interests. This means
it is continuing to use the Karabakh issue as a precondition for
the Armenia-Turkey process.
The ARF continues to
insist that the foreign policy of Armenia has veered from its
national doctrine and predictable developments will have
irreversible consequences.
With these considerations,
during this domestic deliberation stage, the ARF will utilize
all means to expose the existing dangers within the protocols in
an effort to neutralize them.
We call on the Armenian
people and the political forces in Armenia to properly assess
the Armenia-Turkey relations process with its negative
consequences and, in the most unified manner, deter the possible
irreversible losses.
Armenian Revolutionary Federation
September 1, 2009
Yerevan |
