Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A12
By MARC CHAMPION in Istanbul
and MARCUS WALKER
and STEPHEN FIDLER in Davos, Switzerland
A deal between Turkey and Armenia to open their border and establish diplomatic relations after generations of dispute over genocide allegations and territory is under growing threat of collapse.
Armenia is pushing for rapid ratification of the deal, signed in October, while Turkey has a longer time frame. On Wednesday, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev added to concerns for the deal when he said he was confident Turkey wouldn’t ratify the agreement until Armenia has returned Azeri territory that it occupies, including the mainly ethnic-Armenian region of Nagorno Karabakh.
“There is a common understanding in the region that there should be a first step by Armenia to start the liberation of the occupied territories,” Mr. Aliyev said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in Davos, Switzerland. He said he was “fully satisfied” with Turkey’s understanding of the issue, despite harshly criticizing Turkey’s handling of it in the past.
“If the two issues are disconnected, then probably Armenia will freeze negotiations with Azerbaijan [over Nagorno Karabakh],” said Mr. Aliyev, adding that he believed economic pressure was one of the main incentives for Armenia to come to the table. Mr. Aliyev has warned previously that pushing ahead with the deal regardless of Nagorno Karabakh and the resulting freezing of negotiations could lead to renewed war.
Turkey’s leaders, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have said repeatedly that the border opening and settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict are linked.
There is no sign of progress in the 15-year-old peace talks. But some ambiguity remains in Turkey’s position. The territorial dispute isn’t mentioned in October’s protocols.
“Now we are approaching the moment when things get more and more difficult,” said Vigen Sargsyan, deputy chief of staff to the Armenian president. Pressure on the Armenian president to abandon the diplomatic effort is building strongly as the next annual April 24 U.S. presidential commemoration of the 1915 Ottoman massacre of up to 1.5 million ethnic Armenians approaches.
Turkish officials, by contrast, talk about an open-ended process that could last a year or more if necessary. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu also recently expressed anger at a decision by Armenia’s constitutional court that he said in effect puts conditions on the deal—a claim Mr. Sargsyan dismissed.
Mr. Sargsyan said that while Armenia’s government is sending ratification papers for the deal to parliament, it is also preparing legislation to enable the president to withdraw his signature from treaties. “If this opportunity is lost it will push the whole region back, not to where we started when talks began but beyond that,” said Mr. Sargsyan. He said trust between the two sides would be destroyed.
Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in protest at the occupation by Armenia-backed forces of Nagorno Karabakh and seven districts around it that were seized as buffer zones. But in the wake of the war between Georgia and Russia in August 2008, Turkey’s government said it was ready to negotiate an end to Armenia’s isolation.
Mr. Aliyev has expressed anger over the talks by threatening to reroute Azeri natural-gas and oil exports away from Turkey.
He also expressed frustration over the delays in construction of the EU’s planned Nabucco pipeline, which would carry natural gas from the Caspian Sea to EU markets via Turkey.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A12
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