Turkey's Preconditions updated by Ahmet Davutoglu

[Yedtarts]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwaAOCCpjHs

[Catharsis]

Re: Turkey's Preconditions updated by Ahmet Davutoglu

Full Interview -

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKV9T9VsLuw

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtUE7YNLtbw

[AlphaPapa]

Re: Turkey's Preconditions updated by Ahmet Davutoglu

douchebag...pretty arrogant of him to do so.

http://hyemedia.com/2009/10/22/armenian-turkish-protocols-azerbaijani-vector-discussion-at-the-turkish-parliament-are-accompanied-with-sharp-criticism-towards-the-authorities/

I'm not COMPLETELY against the protocols, per se, except that we know what to expect from any Turkish offer, hence my opposition to any reconciliation with HOSTILE nations. The hostilities are one sided, hence they should be the ones bending our way.

[Davo88]

Re: Turkey's Preconditions updated by Ahmet Davutoglu

The Turkish position seems to be more firm and more consistent than that of our current government, which explains their recent success on the international scene. Our newly found "friend" Davutoglu loves to insist on this success, which helps to amplify his consistency and firmness. I hope that Yerevan is taking note of his aggressive stance.

Among the Armenian politicians, I only see the contrary. I see confusion, unprofessionalism, a lot of vague and unclear justifications, and so on. For example, just look at how Sargsyan retracted from his words according to which he would attend the match at Bursa only if he is reasonably sure that the Turkish-Armenian border will open. Clearly though, things are not going towards that direction. If our politicians think that Turkey will be "returning the favour" by making concessions of its own on the genocide issue, they are living in a rosy world. This is clearly seen by his certainty about what is contained in the archives which in reality are the bogus proofs of the Turkish version. What do you think they were doing during all those years when the archives were closed to the public? Cleaning up the dust? And what about the international archives?

For these reasons, our government needs a serious reality check, it needs to see what ill-intentioned nation we are having to deal with today. Anyway, for the moment, let us hope for the best.

[Federate]

Re: Turkey's Preconditions updated by Ahmet Davutoglu

Have to hand it to Davutoglu, he is an excellent foreign minister. No wonder Babacan was fired.
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Turkey Links Armenia Deal Ratification With Karabakh


Turkey’s parliament will not ratify the normalization agreements with Armenia unless international efforts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict yield a breakthrough, according to Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
“We have been saying that these protocols will have a positive impact on stability in the South Caucasus and particularly on the Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute to end the occupation of Azeri territories by Armenians,” Davutoglu said in an interview with Al Jazeera television aired on Monday. “This is our belief. Such progress will definitely have a very positive impact on the ratification process in our parliament.

“If there is a deterioration of the situation [in the Karabakh dispute] or … if there is no hope for such [progress] then the members of our parliament will have a negative tendency to vote. Therefore, we now have to work on a positive scenario.”

“In order to get a yes [vote,] we need to have some progress in the peace talks because Azerbaijan is a strategic ally and almost a domestic issue for Turkish foreign policy,” stressed Davutoglu. The international community should help to end “the illegal occupation of 20 percent of Azerbaijani territories” if it wants a speedy normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations, he said.

When asked whether that means the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will not send the agreements to parliament for ratification before it sees decisive progress in the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations, Davutoglu replied, “Yes, of course.”

The minister seemed to play down the fact that Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has a clear majority in Turkey’s Grand National Assembly. “According to our constitution, the government’s responsibility is just sending these agreements to the parliament,” he said, speaking in English. “We can not impose anything on the parliament.”

Davutoglu’s remarks were in tune with Erdogan’s repeated assurances that Turkey will not open its border with Armenia before a Karabakh settlement acceptable to Azerbaijan. Official Baku, which strongly criticized the signing of the Turkish-Armenian protocols earlier this month, was quick to welcome them.

“Azerbaijan relies on the Turkish side’s assurances that it will not open the border with Armenia without a resolution of the Karabakh problem and we have no reason to doubt the Turkish leadership’s statements on the issue,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Elkhan Polukhov told the 1news.az news agency. “We find very positive the fact that the Turkish leaders adhere to their previous positions on the issue.”

The Armenian government did not react to Davutoglu’s interview as of Tuesday evening. President Serzh Sarkisian implicitly threatened earlier to walk away from the agreements if the Turks fail to implement them “within a reasonable timeframe.” Some of his political allies have spoken of “early spring” as Yerevan’s unofficial deadline for the completion of the ratification process.

Armenian leaders emphasize the fact that neither Turkish-Armenian protocol makes any reference to the Karabakh conflict. Their political opponents claim, however, that the Sarkisian administration promised to make more concessions to Azerbaijan during its fence-mending negotiations with Ankara.

http://www.armenialiberty.org/content/article/1862274.html

[AlphaPapa]

Re: Turkey's Preconditions updated by Ahmet Davutoglu

The Turks have much to smile about. I'm sure they love talking about that, and the psuedo-surrendering of the PKK, and other creative 'solutions' to Turkish issues/questions.

[ninetoyadome]

Re: Turkey's Preconditions updated by Ahmet Davutoglu

This makes turkey look bad because they, like always, are backtracking from the agreement where it was stated opening the borders without preconditions. Maybe now Armenia should say turkey has to get out of Cyprus.

[Davo88]

Re: Turkey's Preconditions updated by Ahmet Davutoglu

... or Western Armenia though our current leaders wouldn't do that because they have close to no guts.

[AlphaPapa]

Re: Turkey's Preconditions updated by Ahmet Davutoglu

... or Western Armenia though our current leaders wouldn't do that because they have close to no guts.

We went through quite a civil hell when Raffi Hovannessian affirmed the genocide while on a diplomatic visit to Ankara.

[Yedtarts]

Re: Turkey's Preconditions updated by Ahmet Davutoglu

Open Letter to Ahmet Davutoglu

YEREVAN—Professor Ara Papian, the director of the Modus Vivendi Center in Yerevan issued an open letter to Turkey Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. In the letter, Papian analyzes Davutoglu’s speech, last week, to parliament as he presented the protocols for ratification. Below is the complete text of the letter:

Respected Minister,
I read with interest the text of your speech of the 21st of October at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. My impressions were mixed. However, I mainly felt that you wished to present what was desirable, instead of what was real.

To begin with, it was astonishing to hear of “occupation” from the foreign minister of a country which has itself been occupying 37% of the territory of Cyprus for more than three decades now, not to mention three-fourths of my homeland – the Republic of Armenia – for almost nine decades. I would like to stress that I am not referring to some abstract “Armenian lands,” but solely the territory granted to the Republic of Armenia through a document of international law, that is, the arbitral award of US President Woodrow Wilson of the 22nd of November, 1920. I shall elaborate on the arbitral award later, but for now I would simply like to say that, in accordance with international law, arbitral awards are “definitive and without appeal.”1

Respected Minister,

While commenting on the fifth clause of protocol on the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Turkey2, you drew the conclusion that the Republic of Armenia recognises “the existing border” according to the treaties of Moscow (of the 16th of March, 1921) and Kars (of the 13th of October, 1921).

This is a very arbitrary conclusion indeed. The document in question does not cite the aforementioned so-called treaties. The protocols refer only to “the relevant treaties of international law.” That is, evidently, the treaties in question must be governed by international law, at the very least not being in violation of it. Simultaneously, by referring to “the relevant treaties of international law” and not simply “international treaties,” the protocol provides a more inclusive definition, and thus brings in “the instruments of international law” in general, regardless of the kind of document, as, given the present case, we have a document known as a “protocol.” Accordingly, a “treaty” must be understood in a way separate from the term for the document, purely as a legal, written international agreement. [“Treaty” means an international agreement concluded between States in written form and governed by international law – Article 2.1(a), Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969].

It is evident that “the existing border” mentioned in the protocol is not the illegal dividing line which came about as a result of Bolshevik-Kemalist actions. Ex injuria non oritur jus, illegal acts cannot create law. “The existing border” implies that which exists in international law and in accordance with international law. And there is no only one such border between Armenia and Turkey: the border decided by the arbitral award of US President Woodrow Wilson.

The treaties of Moscow and Kars which you mentioned in your speech are not treaties at all from an international law point of view. In order for them to be considered as treaties, they ought to have been signed by the plenipotentiary representatives of the lawful governments of recognized states. Neither the Kemalists, nor the Bolsheviks, to say nothing of the Armenian Bolsheviks brought to power in Armenia, fulfilled the above requirement in 1921. And so, the act of signing those treaties were in violation of the basic principles of international law – jus cogens – at the very moment they were signed. And according to Article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969, which you yourself cited in your speech, “A treaty is void if, at the time of its conclusion, it conflicts with a peremptory norm of general international law.”

Do you really believe that two unrecognized, and consequently illegal self-proclaimed administrations, as the Bolsheviks and Kemalists were in 1921, could, through a bilateral treaty (of Moscow), nullify a legally negotiated international document signed by eighteen recognised states (the Treaty of Sèvres)? Do you believe that the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact, for example, is a legal document? I don’t think so, because two countries, namely the USSR and Germany, could not decide the borders of a third country. Then why do you believe that two rebel movements, as, I repeat, the Bolsheviks and Kemalists were in 1921, had the authority to decide in Moscow the borders of some other country, the Republic of Armenia, even if it were occupied?

Do you really believe that the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, as well as the Georgian and Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic ever had the capacity to make treaties under international law? Of course not. Since April of 1920 (for Azerbaijan), December of 1920 (for Armenia) and February of 1921 (for Georgia), these countries were rendered simply territories of different administrative units under Russian Bolshevik occupation. In Armenia’s case, the Senate of the United States adopted outright the following by Resolution #245 on the 3rd of June, 1924: “Turkey joined with Soviet Russia in the destruction of the Armenian State.”3 If there were no Republic of Armenia from the 2nd of December, 1920, how could it sign an international treaty in Kars in October of 1921?

It is an indisputable fact of international law that no legal consequences are held for an occupied country by the acts of the occupiers, as “a cession of territory during occupation is not effective.”4 There is no ambiguity in this matter.

The fact that the protocols do not make legal the situation created as a result of the Armenian Genocide and that they do not recognize any frontiers was stated outright in the address of the President of the Republic of Armenia, Serzh Sarkisian, on the 10th of October, 2009: “Any sort of relationship with Turkey cannot cast into doubt the reality of the dispossession and genocide of the Armenian people,” and “The issue of the current frontier between Armenia and Turkey is subject to a resolution as per prevailing international law. The protocols say nothing more than that.”

Clear and simple.

Now let us see what this “prevailing international law” is exactly, according to which “the issue of the current frontier between Armenia and Turkey is subject to a resolution.”

In order to understand this, one must return to the not-too-distant past, during that short period of time, when the Republic of Armenia was recognised as a state by the international community. When, on the 19th of January, 1920, the Supreme Council of the Paris Peace Conference, that is, the British Empire, France and Italy, recognised the Republic of Armenia, it was done so with a certain condition, that the borders of the Republic of Armenia were to be determined soon afterwards. The US also recognised the Republic of Armenia with that same condition on the 23rd of April, 1920.

When it came to the borders of the Republic of Armenia, naturally, the most important was the question of the Armenia-Turkey frontier. And so, at the San Remo session of the Paris Peace Conference, alongside other issues, this particular question was discussed during the 24th to the 27th of April, 1920, and, on the 26th of April, the US President Woodrow Wilson was officially requested to arbitrate the frontiers of Armenia.5 On the 17th of May, 1920, President Wilson accepted and took on the duties and authority as the arbiter of the frontier between Armenia and Turkey. I would like to especially emphasize that this was almost three months before the Treaty of Sèvres was signed (which took place on the 10th of August, 1920). Whether the Treaty of Sèvres would come to pass or not, the compromis (agreement) of a legal arbiter existed, and consequently, the arbitral award deciding the border between Armenia and Turkey would take place. It is another matter that the Treaty of Sèvres consisted of an additional compromis. It is necessary to note that the validity of the compromis only requires the signatures of the authorized representatives and that no ratification is required for compromis.

Accordingly, based upon the compromis of San Remo (of the 26th of April, 1920), as well as that of Sèvres (of the 10th of August, 1920), US President Woodrow Wilson carried out his arbitral award on the borders between Armenia and Turkey on the 22nd of November, 1920, which was to be enforced thereupon and without reservations in accordance with the agreement (compromis).

Two days later, on the 24th of November, the award was officially conveyed by telegraph to the Paris Peace Conference for the consideration of the League of Nations. The award was accepted as such, but remained unsettled, because the beneficiary of the award – the Republic of Armenia – ceased to exist on the 2nd of December, 1920.

Read more....

http://www.asbarez.com/2009/10/26/open-letter-to-ahmet-davutoglu/