Ruben Safrastyan, turkologist, Director of Institute of Oriental Studies, does not recommend expecting anything from Turkey on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. “There is no need to wait for something. The prognostic that Turkey could fundamentally change its policy in recognizing the Armenian Genocide, is missing. I do not also consider the show organized in Yerevan serious. The Turkish Foreign minister’s interview with Turkish journalists regarding the Armenian-Turkish relations did not say anything,” said Mr. Safrastyan, today, at “Pastark” club. He also said that the Armenian-Turkish relations stirred the interest of different centers around the world, because they are driven by Turkey’s relations with other countries, and what will be the situation in the South Caucasus. “The current state of affairs of Karabakh works for all major centers in the world, this is geopolitically frozen.” To the question of how Armenia’s membership to the CU would affect the possibilities of the Armenian-Turkish dialogue, the turkologist said, “Armenia’s accession is of no special geopolitical importance to the world. What happened was due to the fact that we still had a contract with Russia since 1997, we are a CSTO member, and Russia’s military bases are deployed in Armenia. Geopolitically, no new phenomenon happened; therefore, the situation is not changed.” Turkologist Hakob Chakryan does not see any perspective in the Armenian-Turkish dialogue, because “Armenian-Turkish dialogue does not exist, there would not be a dialogue even on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. They would only try to create an impression that they want to resume the dialogue, to create the illusion that they are ready only to possibly lessen the effect. So, accession of failure to join the Customs Union will not have a significant effect on the Armenian-Turkish dialogue, or the development of relations.” In the conversation with us, Mr. Chakryan also expressed an opinion that the Karabakh conflict settlement is actually frozen. According to him, there is a competition going on between the Minsk Co-chair countries regarding the settlement of Karabakh conflict, for the sake of influence in the South Caucasus. “Everybody is in favor of the conflict to be settled, and depending on which country would settle it, the influence of given country will drastically increase.”
Arpine Simonyan
