US congressman Pete Sessions has submitted a resolution urging President Obama to work toward reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia, Anadolu agency reports.
The draft states that "the Obama Administration has, since early 2009, sought to improve Armenian-Turkish relations": "President Barack Obama had, on April 6, 2009, voiced the United States Government's expectation that the Armenian-Turkish dialogue would "bear fruit very quickly," but recent attempts to reestablish diplomatic relations have been unsuccessful," 1news.az cited the document.The project calls on the US to work toward equitable, constructive, stable, and durable Armenian-Turkish relations in the next hundred years, based upon the two countries' common interests and the United States' significant security interests in the region.The President of the Turkish Institute for Progress, Derya Tashkyn, commenting on the initiative, said that the project should be supported by everyone who believes that it will contribute to the development of relations between Turkey and Armenia.
The draft states that "the Obama Administration has, since early 2009, sought to improve Armenian-Turkish relations": "President Barack Obama had, on April 6, 2009, voiced the United States Government's expectation that the Armenian-Turkish dialogue would "bear fruit very quickly," but recent attempts to reestablish diplomatic relations have been unsuccessful," 1news.az cited the document.
The project calls on the US to work toward equitable, constructive, stable, and durable Armenian-Turkish relations in the next hundred years, based upon the two countries' common interests and the United States' significant security interests in the region.
The President of the Turkish Institute for Progress, Derya Tashkyn, commenting on the initiative, said that the project should be supported by everyone who believes that it will contribute to the development of relations between Turkey and Armenia.
"This is the first time that a resolution looking to the future of Turkish-Armenian relations has ever been introduced and I hope that all of my former colleagues in the House will support this important measure," an adviser to the Turkish Institute for Progress and Democratic former member of the Texas House of Representatives, Solomon Ortiz, said.
A political analyst and a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, Sergey Markov, told Vestnik Kavkaza that the United States today is not the dominant force in the Caucasus, and the Caucasus is a priority of US foreign policy. "Their priority now is the Pacific region, South and Central America, the Middle East, that is, the key points of oil production. Therefore, the resources that Americans put into work with the Caucasus are small, and there is no possibility of ensuring its dominance there," Markov noted.
He stressed that Russia is able to fulfill such commitments to reconciliation in the region with much greater efficiency. "Russia in the framework of improving its relations with Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey can play an important role, but not by imposing a rigid policy, but through mediation and compromise," he said.
The Director of the Armenian branch of the CIS Institute, Alexander Makarov, in his turn, said that "it is no secret that the American foreign policy department periodically participated as one of the mediators in the process of normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations. However, the question is how far the Turkish side is ready to go on this road. Therefore, this document is only a declarative statement," the expert said.
A docent of the Faculty of International Relations of the TOBB University of Economics and Technology (Ankara), Togrul Ismail, said that Turkey wants to have good-neighborly relations with Armenia without any intermediaries, but Armenia has territorial claims, not recognizing the Kars and Moscow agreements of 1921 and 1922. "In addition, you know that the diplomatic relations between Turkey and Armenia were marred after Armenia occupied the Kelbajar district of Azerbaijan. Based on the fact that the Republic of Armenia today has such an aggressive foreign policy, it will be very difficult to establish bilateral relations," the expert said.
He also agreed that Russia would play the role of mediator in this process much better.
