Turkey's Erdoğan misleads, slams, threatens

17:57 01/02/2010 » Politics

Turkey's Erdoğan misleads, slams, threatens

Turkey's Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, just before the Euronews launch of broadcasting in Turkish, spoke with the Euronews on a range of topics, from Turkey’s negotiations aimed at eventual full membership in the European Union to Cyprus, relations with Israel, questions on the Kurdish minority and Armenia.

Referring to the constitutional court of Armenia’s interpretation of the Turkish-Armenian protocols aimed at normalising mutual ties, Erdogan said:

“We appear to have got off to an unhealthy start. Well, we appear to have got off to an unhealthy start. What are we negotiating about? What are we going to do? Armenia should once again take this into consideration, because we fulfilled our protocol commitments,” he stressed. Yet, despite the above, the Premier emphasized Turkey’s readiness to continue with the process. “Both sides have road maps. The process will continue. We are fully prepared and sincere, and will proceed in the same way as we have so far,” he concluded.

Mr Erdogan is evidently misleading everyone saying “we fulfilled our protocol commitments”: we can call this nothing but a lie.

Moreover, taking into consideration where he sounded it, we can call it an attempt to mislead the international public.

Actually, after signing the normalization protocols, Turkey has taken no certain steps over ratification. Despite the determined terms, even the foreign relations committee of the Turkish parliament has not passed a conclusion over the documents, while it should have done this by mid-December, 2009.

As to what the Turkish party has done over fulfilling its commitments, is not a secret: they have made statements which not only have nothing to do with the protocols but also contradict to those.

What we can do is only remind the Turkish PM once again that the decision of the Armenian Constitutional Court is final and it is not subject to appeal.

Referring to Turkey’s EU integration, Erdogan said: “Unfortunately, some of the EU member states are not acting honestly. This is where a problem arises. Why am I saying this? Because they are trying to corner Turkey with conditions that do not exist in the acquis communautaire [the total accumulated body of EU law]. This is really wrong. We have to bear in mind that we leaders are mortal but that nations are not. A leader’s (refers to French President Sarkozy) negative approach towards another country would negatively affect people’s perception in that country about the country of that leader.”

Most interesting thing about this is that due to the lack of substantial arguments, Erdogan again turns to Turkey’s most wide-spread method of solving issues: threat.

Source: Panorama.am

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