US Again Tells Turkey to Honor Armenia Accord

“On Armenia, he said to the prime minister what he had raised with President Gul, as well the hope that now that the protocols for normalization were back on the agenda of the parliament that Turkey would be able to move on those protocols in the months ahead,” the Obama administration official said.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton conveyed a similar message to the Turkish government when she visited Istanbul last July.

The Turkish leaders and Erdogan in particular have repeatedly made clear that the protocols will not be ratified by Turkey’s parliament before a breakthrough in international efforts to resolve the Nagorno- Karabagh conflict.

Armenia rejects this precondition. President Serge Sargisian threatened earlier this year to withdraw Yerevan’s signature from the accord if the Turks stick to the Karabagh linkage.

According to the Hurriyet Daily News, Biden told Gul that Ankara should “speed up the normalization process with Armenia” if it wants the Obama administration to block further resolutions in the US Congress recognizing the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

This warning attributed to Biden could be seized upon by Armenian critics of the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement who say it has helped Ankara to thwart a broader international recognition of the Armenian Genocide.