Armenia-Turkey Protocols are Dead: Cengiz Aktar

With the adoption of the House Resolution on Thursday, March 4 in the United States House of Representatives’ Foreign Relations Committee regarding the Armenian Genocide, along with the adoption of a motion Thursday in the Swedish Parliament, Turkey’s official denialist positions have been hard hit, Turkish political analyst Cengiz Aktar writes in Turkish news source Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review, adding that the “the worst casualty of all is the death of the Protocols signed between Armenia and Turkey in order to normalize relations.”

According to Aktar, the adoption of the House Resolution in the US subcommittee was already the last nail in the coffin of the Protocols. Now with the Swedish motion they can be considered definitely dead. The result means Armenia, Turkey and the remaining Caucasus countries actually all lost.

In his opinion, the ratification process was hard hit first thanks to remarks by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who, despite his poor insight on foreign affairs, cannot help himself but to speak out exactly as he does at home. He connected the Protocols’ ratification in Turkish Parliament with finding a solution to the Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. So it became clear that no ratification could take place in the Turkish Parliament before the US voting. That undoubtedly played a role in the Genocide bill being passed in the US Foreign Relations Committee and now in the Swedish Parliament.

“Delegations armed with excessive self-confidence, sure of their denialist certitudes but basically unfamiliar with the issue, headed to Washington. The meaning of the voting was exaggerated; Turkish public opinion was ill-informed to a degree that today many people in Turkey think that “the US has approved the Armenian Genocide,” writes Aktar.

Due to the negative environment created after these two events, the intention to settle scores among Turkish politicians and the opposition’s attempts to turn this event into an advantage, the Protocols’ approval now cannot be thought of separately from the Genocide bill in the US and the decision of the Swedish Parliament.