YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Armenia has asked Russia to mediate in the normalization of its relations with Turkey, an Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Monday.
Vahan Hunanyan told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that a number of Armenia’s partners, including Russia, have expressed readiness to mediate in Turkish-Armenian normalization and the Armenian side has asked Moscow to be a go-between.
“A number of international partners, including Russia, have stated that they are ready to support the Armenian-Turkish settlement process. And we have informed Russia that we are ready to start the Armenian-Turkish settlement process without preconditions. When and if such a process starts, naturally, we will provide information on that,” Hunanyan said.
In August, the leaders of Armenia and Turkey spoke about “positive signals” coming from the other side of the border. In September, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan even revealed that through Georgia’s prime minister, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had offered him to meet. He added, however, that for such a meeting to take place, Yerevan had to take “clear steps” towards “[opening] the Zangezur corridor [for Azerbaijan].”
Shortly afterwards Pashinyan reiterated through a spokesperson that Armenia does not accept what he called ‘corridor logic’ in unblocking transport links in the region, but added that Yerevan was ready for contacts with Ankara.
According to the Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman, no direct talks have taken place between Yerevan and Ankara yet.
In a recent interview with Le Figaro Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said that Ankara was setting new conditions for starting a dialogue with Yerevan, including the provision of an exterritorial corridor that would connect Azerbaijan and its exclave of Nakhichevan.
Mirzoyan told the French daily that the demand for such a corridor was out of the question.
“States must allow transit while maintaining sovereignty over their territory,” he said. “All transport links in the region must be reopened.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hunanyan said that Mirzoyan’s remarks were based “on public statements made by Turkey about the so-called Zangezur corridor.”
“They [Turks] have constantly raised this subject at the level of both the president and the foreign minister. And we say that such a thing cannot happen. However, as I mentioned, there have been no negotiations,” the official added.
As of Monday the Turkish Foreign Ministry has not responded to a request by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service for a comment regarding this issue.
Oriental-studies expert David Hovhannisyan, who has a diplomatic rank of ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary, believes that Turkey strives to take advantage of the current weakness of Armenia, trying to resolve an issue that is of strategic importance for it — getting a direct land connection with Azerbaijan.
“We should discuss everything, because maybe those conditions are not set so strictly, or maybe there are opportunities to maneuver. But the red line for us should be the extent to which this or that precondition creates problems for our sovereignty. If it creates a problem, then it is unacceptable. And the notion of a corridor, naturally, creates a problem,” Hovhannisyan told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Opening transportation links in the region is part of the Russia-brokered cease-fire agreement that ended 44 days of fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh last November.
A corresponding provision in the agreement also talks about Azerbaijan’s access to Nakhichevan via Armenia that would be controlled by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). Armenia, however, points to the fact that the provision has no reference to a corridor.
Visiting Yerevan on November 5, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Overchuk confirmed that decisions for the future regional unblocking “are based on the notion that the countries will retain sovereignty over roads passing through their territory.”
It is encouraging to read that the Armenian government is maintaining its position of NO CORRIDOR.
Turkey will not start diplomatic relations without extorting major concessions from Armenia.
Agreeing to a corridor is tantamount to national suicide.
Satkatsreq bozik davachan pashinoghlun. Miajn dranum e prkutjune.
The leaders of the incompetent and dysfunctional Armenian government, the prime minister in particular, know very well their days will be numbered if they allow such a land passage to connect occupied Armenian Nakhijevan province to artificial Azerbaijan republic invented 103 years on occupied Armenian homeland. Armenian leaders who allows such a passage to connect one part of enemy-occupied Armenian homeland, that is Nakhijevan depopulated of all Armenians during Azer-SSR and the last remnants of the Armenian ancient presence there (such as the 1,300 year old Julfa cemetery) desecrated and destroyed, to another enemy-occupied Armenian homeland under the fake and fabricated name of Azerbaijan, rest-assured they will be branded as traitors and face the consequences of their actions. The Armenian nation will not forgive them and will hold them accountable.
Whatever label they give to this passage, a road or a corridor, the fact is that this is part of last century terrorist Turkey’s miserably-failed and long-awaited pan-Turanic agenda to connect Turkey to Central Asia via artificially invented Azerbaijan as a Turkish outpost in the South Caucasus post Ottoman defeat at the end of WWI in 1918. This can never be allowed to happen. In addition to terrorist Turkey’s fascist adventures, I think this is part of a much bigger scheme which will sooner or later turn Armenia into an isolated landlocked island with no connection to the outside world, geographically disconnected from the southern neighbor Iran very important to Armenia and the disruption of the North-South highway connecting Iran’s southern ports, i.e. the Persian Gulf, to Armenia through the Iranian territory and onto the Black Sea ports through Armenian and Georgian territories and then onto Europe. In essence, this will be a form of global economic blockade of these countries involved.
Normalization of relations with genocide denier terrorist Turkey, which implies opening of the borders which they themselves closed in 1993, is a very bad idea and Armenia will have nothing to gain but plenty to lose from such a move. What will Armenia export to Muslim Turkey, Armenian brandy? Instead, the Turkish firms will flood the Armenian markets with cheap Turkish goods creating more jobless population and more poverty as a result. Wealthy Turkish businessmen will buy properties throughout Armenia at dirt cheap prices, high-profile multi-billion dollar entrepreneurs will move industries and create new ones in Armenia and sooner or later they will take over Armenia economically. Besides, how dishonorable and self-loathing does one have to be to attempt to normalize relations with such fascist state when only a year ago its terrorist leadership planned, provoked, dictated and conducted the 2020 war on the Armenians on criminal Azerbaijan’s behalf while the backstabbing Russians sat back and watched their only true and genuine ally in the region be attacked by these terrorists? The sooner these defeatist and unpatriotic Armenian leaders go away the better!