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By Ruben Meloyan<\/span><\/p>\n Echoing statements by his Turkish counterpart, Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian said on Wednesday that Armenia and Turkey have come close to normalizing their historically strained relations. He also dismissed Ankara\u2019s warnings that the new U.S. administration will set back the process if it recognizes the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide.<\/p>\n The two neighbors embarked on a dramatic rapprochement last year culminating in Turkish President Abdullah Gul\u2019s historic September trip to Yerevan. In a series of follow-up negotiations, Nalbandian and Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan reportedly made further progress towards the establishment of diplomatic relations and the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border.<\/p>\n \u201cTurkey and Armenia have never been closer to a plan on normalizing relations,\u201d Babacan stated late last week.<\/p>\n Commenting on this statement, Nalbandian said Yerevan continues to stand for an unconditional normalization of bilateral ties. \u201cOur position is unchanged and we expect the same approach from Turkey,\u201d he told a news conference. \u201cIn that case, we are really very close to solving the issue. In that sense, I share Babacan\u2019s view that we are very close to normalizing relations.\u201d<\/p>\n But he stressed that Ankara should drop its preconditions for diplomatic relations and an open border if the process is to reach a successful conclusion. A resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict acceptable to Azerbaijan has been one of those preconditions.<\/p>\n Turkey also wants an end to the decades-long Armenian campaign for international recognition of the 1915 genocide. Babacan warned that U.S. President Barack Obama \u201cwill harm the process\u201d if he honors his election campaign pledge to term the Armenian massacres a genocide once in office.<\/p>\n Nalbandian disagreed with that. \u201cIf there is a genuine desire to normalize relations between Turkey and Armenia, then nothing can impede that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The minister also sounded a note of caution about international mediators\u2019 stated hopes to broker a framework agreement on Nagorno-Karabakh in the first half of this year. Matthew Bryza, the U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, told RFE\/RL on Tuesday that the mediators \u201ctry to have it signed in the beginning of summer.\u201d He said the success of those efforts depends not only on the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan but public support in both countries for the proposed basic principles of a Karabakh settlement.<\/p>\n \u201cThe societies will be presented with principles that have been agreed on,\u201d said Nalbandian. \u201cNegotiations are continuing on the basis of the principles proposed by the co-chairs, and there is no agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf we reach such agreements, we will come to a point where they will be presented to the publics in both Armenia and Karabakh,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd if there is popular support for them, the leadership will be able to make some decisions. But I wouldn\u2019t set any time frames.\u201d<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.azatutyun.am\/a\/1599404.html<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 By Ruben Meloyan Echoing statements by his Turkish counterpart, Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian said on Wednesday that Armenia and Turkey have come close to normalizing their historically strained relations. He also dismissed Ankara\u2019s warnings that the new U.S. administration will set back the process if it recognizes the 1915 mass […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":783838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,41,89],"tags":[204],"class_list":["post-8625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenia","category-azerbaijan","category-turkey","tag-nagorno-karabakh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8625","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=8625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}