On Jan. 18, Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a press release criticizing the recently published grounds of the decision of the Armenian Constitutional Court on the protocols between Turkey and Armenia.
Below is the full text of the ministry’s press release:
The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Armenia has declared its decision of constitutional conformity on the Protocols between Turkey and Armenia signed on 10 October 2009 with a short statement on 12 January 2010. The Constitutional Court has recently published its grounds of decision. It has been observed that this decision contains preconditions and restrictive provisions which impair the letter and spirit of the Protocols.
The said decision undermines the very reason for negotiating these Protocols as well as their fundamental objective. This approach cannot be accepted on our part.
Turkey, in line with its accustomed allegiance to its international commitments, maintains its adherence to the primary provisions of these Protocols.
We expect the same allegiance from the Armenian Government.
The Armenian constitutional court implicitly ruled that the protocols could not take away Armenian rights (regarding land and the genocide). Now, whether that ruling really holds true in the future, we’ll have to see. But the fact that Turkey objected to this ruling (and assuming it’s not just “payback” for Armenia’s criticizing Turkey’s precondition of a Karabagh/Artsakh settlement) tends to prove that Turkey felt the protocols DID take away certain Armenian land and genocide rights. Thus, Armenians who objected to the protocols were essentially correct to be concerned about the protocols effects on Armenian rights.
However, since Serge has reportedly declared that Armenia adheres to treaties signed by Soviet authorities (which treaties does this mean, specifically? And when exactly did the Soviet Uni0n come into legal being? ), it is unclear how this fits with the constitutional court’s ruling.
For once the Turkish government is being honest when it says, about the RoA Constitutional Court (CC) opinion, that: “The said decision undermines the very reason for negotiating these Protocols as well as their fundamental objective”!
Of course it does as the “very reason…as well as the fundamental objective” of the Protocols is the unconditional and total surrender of Armenia as a vanquished nation! The RoA CC, no doubt influenced by the mass opposition to the Protocols by all sections of the worldwide Armenian community, has clarified and narrowly defined the terms of the Protocols in order to limit the potentially grave dangers emanating from them which threaten many aspects of Armenian national interest.
Not surprising therefore that the Turks are now complaining: “Foul! We don’t like the way you are playing this Protocol game”!
Given these typically Turkish, i.e. cheap and easily detectable, political maneuvering with these hastily-cooked protocols, I think the time is nearing that Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) be recognized as an independent entity, first by Armenia, then by Russia, and then by the rest of the international community. I also think that given the fact that Turkey will never change from being a Genocide-denier, fascist state with sick pan-Turkist ambitions, in April of 2010 the U.S. President MUST, as he promised to the world, use the Genocide word in his Annual Address to the Armenian People, a long-expected word that would adequately characterize the barbarism, humiliation and unspeakable pain that Turks have inflicted upon millions of Armenians, depriving them of their historical homeland in Western Armenia and systematically slaughtering and deporting en masse its inhabitants. Enough is enough!