Moscow: Russian Foreign Ministry to study Russian lawmakers' offer to annul 1921 treaty of friendship with Turkey

The Russian Foreign Ministry will study the State Duma members' offer to annul the 1921 treaty of friendship with Turkey, Spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said at a briefing. 

"The Russian Foreign Ministry has really received a request from a number of Russian State Duma members, who suggest annulling the specified agreement. I can say that the request should be studied," Zakharova said on Wednesday.    

To note, members of Russia's State Duma Valery Rashkin and Sergei Obukhov (Communist Party faction) have sent a letter to the country's leadership and the Foreign Ministry proposing to denounce the Moscow Treaty of Friendship and Brotherhood signed on March 16, 1921, by the government of Soviet Russia (RSFSR) and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey.

In particular, Obukhov said to Izvestia daily, "We should consider a possibility of legal review of all Russian-Turkish agreements that are unfavorable for our country and its allies. Ankara must understand what the escalation of the conflict could be fraught with for it. Only this can bring it to earth and prevent it from carrying out new provocations".  The initiative has been supported by the Just Russia faction.  According to State Duma member Oleg Pakholkov, the Moscow treaty was signed to the detriment of Russia's interests.  Obukhov noted that "two of the three Transcaucasian republics - Georgia and Armenia - did not recognize the terms of the treaty considering it unfair." "One should realize that in 1921 the Bolshevik (Soviet) government was literally hanging by a single thread: the foreign intervention and civil war continued. Under those circumstances Soviet Russia could not speak from a position of strength and impose more favorable terms of the treaty on Turkey," the parliamentarian said. The newspaper notes that under the treaty "the former Kars region and the southern part of the former Batumi region that were part of the Russian Empire since 1878 as well as former Surmalin district of Erivan Governorate that was part of the Russian Empire since 1828 with Mount Ararat were ceded to Turkey."

Moscow's relations with Ankara deteriorated after a Russian Su-24 aircraft was downed on November 24 by a missile fired from a Turkish F-16 fighter over Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin described the downing as a "stab in the back" performed by the "accomplices of terrorists."