Armenia Will Declare Turkish-Armenian Protocols Null and Void, Says President Sarkisian

NEW YORK — Armenia has never made the recognition of the Armenian Genocide a precondition for the normalization of the bilateral relations with Turkey, Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian said in his speech in the 72nd UN General Assembly in New York.

“It was upon the initiative of Armenia that a normalization process was launched, resulting in the conclusion of the Zürich protocols in October 2009.

Up to this day, those documents have not been ratified, instead, they have landed in some dark drawers of the official Ankara. The Government of Turkey came up with preposterous preconditions for their ratification that run counter to the letter and spirit of the Protocols. I expressed the clear-cut views of the Armenian people on this issue three years ago, when I spoke from this eminent podium. Now the time has come for additional explanations”, the President said.

He emphasized that the leadership of Turkey are mistaken if they think that those documents can be held hostage forever and ratified only at the most opportune occasion from their very point of view.

“The Protocols were negotiated in the existing circumstances in order to find solutions to the actually existing issues. Armenia will declare those two Protocols null and void since they continuously lacked any positive progress towards their implementation. We will enter the spring of 2018 without those, as our experience has demonstrated, futile Protocols.

Armenia, nevertheless, continues to believe that any two neighboring states need to establish and enjoy normal relations in order to address all possible disagreements between them and find solutions to such a discord”, the President said.