![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/13C9965C-F09D-454A-9333-40EDA57F26FC_w640_r1_s.jpg\" "\\"13C9965C-F09D-454A-9333-40EDA57F26FC_w640_r1_s\\"")
<\/p>\nU.S. Vice President Joe Biden pressed Turkey to unconditionally ratify its Western-backed normalization agreements with Armenia \u201cin the months ahead\u201d during a visit to Ankara and Istanbul that ended at the weekend.<\/p>\n
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Turkish President Abdullah Gul (left) receives U.S. Vice President Joe Biden at the Presidential Palace in Ankara on December 2.<\/em><\/p>\n A senior official from the administration of President Barack Obama said the fate of the two Turkish-Armenian protocols signed in 2009 was on the agenda of Biden\u2019s talks with Turkish President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and parliament speaker Cemil Cicek.<\/p>\n The official said that during a breakfast meeting with Cicek on December 2, Biden \u201capplauded the fact that the protocols for normalization with Armenia were back on the agenda of the [Turkish] parliament.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd he expressed his hope that the parliament will be able to act on those protocols in the months ahead,\u201d the official told U.S. journalists traveling with Biden.<\/p>\n The U.S. vice president met Gul later on December 2 before traveling to Istanbul for separate talks with Erdogan held on December 4.<\/p>\n \u201cOn Armenia, he said to the prime minister what he had raised with President Gul, as well — the hope that now that the protocols for normalization were back on the agenda of the parliament, that Turkey would be able to move on those protocols in the months ahead,\u201d the Obama administration official said.<\/p>\n U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton conveyed a similar message to the Turkish government when she visited Istanbul in July.<\/p>\n However, the Turkish leaders and Erdogan in particular have repeatedly made clear that the protocols will not be ratified by Turkey\u2019s parliament before a breakthrough in international efforts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.<\/p>\n Armenia rejects this precondition. President Serzh Sarkisian threatened earlier this year to withdraw Yerevan\u2019s signature from the accord if the Turks stick to the Karabakh linkage.<\/p>\n According to the Istanbul-based \u201cHurriyet Daily News,\u201d Biden told Gul that Ankara should \u201cspeed up the normalization process with Armenia\u201d if it wants the Obama administration to block further resolutions in the U.S. Congress recognizing the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide.<\/p>\n This warning attributed to Biden could be seized upon by Armenian critics of the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement, who say it has helped Ankara to thwart a broader international recognition of the Armenian genocide.<\/p>\n They were already incensed when Biden claimed last year that Sarkisian himself had asked the White House not to use the word genocide with regard to the killing of some 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians while Turkish-Armenian negotiations are in progress. Both official Yerevan and the U.S. Embassy in Armenia denied that claim, which was videotaped by an Armenian-American activist and available on YouTube.com.<\/p>\n Biden strongly supported Armenian genocide resolutions debated by Congress when he was a member of the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n compiled from agency reports<\/p>\n via U.S. Again Tells Turkey To Honor Armenia Accords.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" U.S. Vice President Joe Biden pressed Turkey to unconditionally ratify its Western-backed normalization agreements with Armenia \u201cin the months ahead\u201d during a visit to Ankara and Istanbul that ended at the weekend. Turkish President Abdullah Gul (left) receives U.S. Vice President Joe Biden at the Presidential Palace in Ankara on December 2. A senior official […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":47378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,7,34],"tags":[515],"class_list":["post-47376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenia","category-armenian-question","category-usa","tag-joe-biden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}