On April 22, Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan issued a decree whereby the ratification procedure of the Armenia-Turkey protocols on normalization of relations between the two countries is “suspended”. Accordingly, on April 26, the bill on ratification of these protocols was withdrawn from the agenda of the National Assembly. In a televised message on April 22, Sargsyan declared that this decision was made due to the policy of Turkey “to protract time” aimed  at undermining the process of ratifying the protocols “in a reasonable time and without preconditions”, as previously agreed. In an interview with Armenian Public TV on April 26, Armenian foreign minister Edward Nalbandian commented this move as a refusal of Armenia “to continue the process for the sake of process only”.

Armenia is strongly interested in ratifying the protocols and normalizing relations with its mighty western neighbor, and Sargsyan’s move looks like a desperate effort to stimulate the process as he has done several times previously. The two protocols, “On the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations…”, and “On the Development of Relations…” between the two countries, were initiated (i.e., were ready for signing) as early as February 2009, but were kept secret for several months, largely on Turkey’s request. On April 23, 2009, the foreign ministries of the two countries issued a statement about a “road map” for the normalization process. Meanwhile, no progress was made in that process until Serzh Sargsyan stated in August that he would not pay the expected “soccer visit” to Turkey (reciprocal to the visit of the Turkish President Abdullah Gül to Yerevan on September 6, 2008), unless progress was made in the bilateral relations.

This became a stimulus for making the protocols public on August 31 and signed in Zurich on October 10. However, as the protocols needed ratification by the parliaments of the two countries (evidently a requirement set by Turkey, while Armenia could establish normal relations without the legislature), they have not been enacted so far, with the Turkish side largely responsible for the delay. In particular, Ankara poses preconditions for ratifying the two documents, seeking to condition their ratification on progress in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Armenia is in conflict over this region with Azerbaijan, a close ally of Turkey. The Turkish government is also under strong pressure from its domestic opposition because normalization with Armenia in accordance with the Zurich protocols may expose the problems of the Armenian massacres of 1915 in the Ottoman empire, which Armenia consider to amount to genocide, as well as the Turkish-Armenian border, which are highly sensitive issues in Turkey.

In a rare display of solidarity, the Turkish-Armenian normalization process is supported by the U.S., Russia and France. All these players share the vision that Turkish-Armenian normalization should not be linked with Nagorno-Karabakh, which is a very complicated process per se and will only complicate the normalization process. In his April 22 address, Sargsyan expressed his gratitude to Nicolas Sarkozy, Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev, “as well as our colleagues in a number of European organizations” for encouraging the process of normalization. The most recent effort in this regard was the U.S.–sponsored meeting between Sargsyan and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Washington D.C. on April 12. The meeting, which lasted 75 minutes, brought no progress and Sargsyan decided to suspend the Armenian part of the normalization process, saying that “the reasonable timeframes [for ratification] have, in our opinion, elapsed”, meaning that one year had passed since the joint statement about the “road map”. This can be considered a response to domestic critics saying that Armenia has made too many concessions and should revoke its signature of the protocols. 

Armenia claims the suspension of the ratification process does not mean that the normalization process is over. As Sargsyan put it, “we shall consider moving forward when we are convinced that there is a proper environment in Turkey and there is leadership in Ankara ready to reengage in the normalization process”. The Turkish side also declared its commitment to the normalization as determined by the Zurich protocols. These statements provided for optimistic statements from Washington, Moscow and Paris – the latter in the form of a special letter by President Sarkozy – expressing hopes that the normalization process was not dead and progress could be reached when appropriate.

There is an apparent heterogeneity in the positions of the Turkish leaders, or at least in their statements. Prime Minister Erdogan is the most categorical in his rhetoric to link the issue of Turkish-Armenian normalization with the Nagorno-Karabakh process, whereas the other leaders are more careful and leave room for maneuver. Sargsyan apparently referred to this in his address: “I express gratitude to President Abdullah Gül of Turkey for the political correctness displayed throughout this period and the positive relationship that has developed between us”.

The process of Armenian-Turkish normalization determined by the two Zurich protocols has hereby stopped, and the deadlock imposed in 1993 by the closure of the common border between these countries may remain indefinitely. Turkey’s leaders were not able to detach their policy toward Armenia from their commitments to Azerbaijan. Baku continues to follow the line that keeping the Turkish-Armenian border closed will force concessions from Armenia on the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. Further progress in Turkish-Armenian normalization is highly unlikely before the general elections in Turkey next year.