Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan’s interview to Turkish “Anadolu” agency
Question. You said your absolute priority is finding a solution to the Nagorno Karabakh issue. If there is, and you said that there is a dynamic in making over it. If there is a substantive, significant progress on this topic, on this issue could this be translated into normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia? Could it pave the way for a new normalization process? ..the verification process of the protocol.
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: So far as Turkey is concerned, I think we have been very clear and we have shown continuity, in fact, on this matter as well, that we are prepared to have normalization of relations without preconditions. However, we seem to be the party who is dancing a tango alone. Now Armenia-Turkey relations are an issue of its own merit. Relating it to all other issues is a precondition. Now you realize when it comes to preconditions there may be no shortage of preconditions on the other party as well. So this is not a good way of building relations between neighbors.
Armenia-Turkey relations have their own rationale and should be treated on their own merit. That was the whole philosophy behind the very difficult process which lies in the Zurich Protocols. I have been seeing all kinds of commentary. One has to be very clear. We have walked our mile, Armenia walked its mile.
Question. And there is no extra mile?
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: What is the extra mile? We have brought the Zurich Protocols home. We have taken them to the Parliament awaiting for the other party to do the same only to wake up to a precondition which has never been in the papers before. A precondition which was formulated exactly in the way your question was formulated. So let’s be clear about it. And we are the party which has gone through a very painful process, very painful process of building, investing, making a huge political investment in this, to secure the road to Zurich. So the outcome which is basically, it is too bad to say throwing the Zurich Protocols in the window, but basically, Let’s be diplomatic! Not walking the respective line from the other side has been a huge damage.
Questions. Mr. Sargsyan last March, I understand, he declared that the protocols were null and void if I’m not mistaken. Is your position the same?
ZM: Well look, nearly ten years have passed since 2009. These protocols have been on the table patiently for 9 years, despite all the big debates amongst the Armenian people. And one other thing that one shouldn’t be mistaken about, and this is another thing that I come across occasionally in the public discourse from Turkey, that it is Armenia, the good guys who want the good relations with Turkey but it is the bad diaspora that is poisoning this. Make no mistake about it, the Armenian people, they are, their reflections on it are not in this division between Armenians in Armenia and Armenians in the diaspora. It would be very good to have a better understanding of the way in which the Armenian people build their lives and it would be a total mistake to bring to a level of such degree of simplification, there is no such simplification. It’s a very heavy issue here, domestically, and, so far as the State of Armenia is concerned–but you understand that the Armenian people is much larger than the ones who are strictly in the state of Armenia. You can walk the streets of Yerevan and come across a huge number of people here in Armenia who carry the pain of the Genocide. I represent such a family of survivors, on my grandfather’s side. I’m just trying to underline the depth of complexity of this issue. Now, the Zurich protocols are gone, not because of us, let’s be clear about it, you were mentioning President Sargsyan declaring them null and void, well now it so happens that they have become null and void on the other party shortly after perhaps the ink hasn’t been dry on the paper, because it hasn’t ever materialized in a progress. So for 9 years, from 2009 all the way to 2018, this has been on our table, now we are back to square one I guess. Especially in a condition where the rhetoric that we hear from the other side is not exactly conducive to positivism.