Tigran Balayan: Armenia's leadership has repeatedly commented on normalization of relations with Turkey

Armenia's leadership has repeatedly commented on the normalization of the relations with Turkey without preconditions, Spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of Armenia Tigran Balayan told ArmInfo when commenting on the Turkish foreign minister's recent statement on possible re-launch of the Armenia-Turkey normalization process.

Talking to Haberturk TV, Foreign Minister of Turkey Mevlut Covusoglu said that before the military coup attempt, the Turkish authorities discussed in Baku possible start of normalizing the relations with Armenia.  Cavusoglu said that there were no discussions on the issue with Armenia, but he had talked to his Armenian colleagues on sidelines of various international events.

At the same time, he said, Ankara supports Azerbaijan in the Karabakh conflict and will welcome any settlement schemes suggested by Baku. 

In 1993, Turkey unilaterally closed its air and land borders with Armenia. The airspace was opened in 1995 under the pressure of international society. The opening of the land border and establishment of diplomatic relations failed due to a number of Turkey's preconditions, particularly, to return to Azerbaijan the areas currently under the control of NKR and retain from the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide.  Since 1991, attempts have been made to normalize the bilateral relations, which ended up unsuccessfully because of Turkey's position.

In 2008, at the initiative of the President of Armenian a new phase of Armenian-Turkish relations was started. As a result, on October 10 2009 in Zurich, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of two countries signed the "Protocol on the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Turkey" and "Protocol on development of relations between of the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Turkey". However, after the signature, Turkey abruptly changed its position and rejected to implement the agreements on the normalization of the relations within a reasonable timeframe and without any preconditions, linking the ratification of the Protocols in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey to the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue.  Taking into account the situation created by Turkey, as well as the call of the Political Council of the parties-members of the ruling coalition, on April 22, 2010 the President of the Republic of Armenia signed a decree on the suspension of the process of ratifications of the Protocols. On February 16, 2015 the protocols were called back from the National Assembly according to the degree signed by President of the Republic of Armenia.