Iran’s controversial nuclear program and moves to breathe new life into normalization efforts by Armenia and Turkey are highly likely to be top items on the agenda of a bilateral meeting between Turkish and US leaders on the sidelines of President Barack Obama’s 47-country nuclear security conference which will open at the White House today.
Priorities attributed to each issue by the Turkish and US sides as well as their stances on the same issues may differ from one another, however. While Obama is expected to press Turkey for parliamentary ratification of protocols signed with Armenia last October for the normalization of relations, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is expected to respond to this pressure by urging the US leader to exert more efforts towards the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, a territorial dispute between Yerevan and Turkey’s ally Baku.
As for the Iran issue, the US administration is pressing hard this month for a new UN Security Council resolution that would tighten sanctions on the Islamic republic for refusing to engage in talks about its nuclear program.
Nonetheless, just ahead of his departure from İstanbul on Sunday, Erdoğan explicitly indicated that Turkey, currently one of the rotating members of the council, believes that diplomatic means for resolving the issue have not yet been exhausted.
Erdoğan, speaking at a press conference ahead of his departure for Washington, was reminded of news reports suggesting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had cancelled a planned trip to Washington for the nuclear security conference, after learning that Egypt and Turkey intended to raise the issue of Israel’s assumed atomic arsenal at the meeting.
“We never want nuclear armament in our region. We are against it no matter which country possesses it. Whether it is Israel or Iran, it doesn’t change,” Erdoğan said, while noting that there hasn’t yet been a precise finding on whether Iran’s nuclear program is aimed at possessing nuclear weapons.
Recalling that Iranian leaders assured him that their aim is to use nuclear energy only for peaceful purposes, Erdoğan, however, added: “I can’t read their minds.” The prime minister, meanwhile, also admitted that Iran was not sufficiently “transparent” in its relationship with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). “It wouldn’t be right to make judgments based on possibilities. We want the resolution of the issue through intensive diplomacy,” he said, as he slammed Israel for having nuclear weapons and insisting on not becoming a member of the IAEA.
Erdoğan said he would call the international community’s attention to this point: “You do what you want when you are not a member.”
Israel is believed to be the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East but has never confirmed or denied it. It has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
In response to another question, Erdoğan said he and Obama would try to talk about various bilateral and regional issues within a short time, adding: “The priority issue is developments regarding Armenia.”
Turkey’s ambassador to the US, Namık Tan, returned to Washington on Tuesday after being recalled to Ankara last month in protest of a step by the US Congress towards declaring the Ottoman-era killings of Anatolian Armenians a genocide. The Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representative passed a resolution declaring the killings genocide, but it is unclear whether the full House will vote on it.
In Washington, Tan said on Friday that he came back after assurances by the Obama administration that it would oppose the congressional action and not itself label the killings genocide. “We have received some satisfactory messages. I hope there will be a new chapter,” he said.
In İstanbul, Erdoğan said, “We have always been behind the letter sent to Mr. Kocharian,” referring to his 2005 letter to then-Armenian President Robert Kocharian, inviting him to establish a joint commission of historians and experts from both Turkey and Armenia to study the events of 1915 using documents from the archives of Turkey, Armenia and any other country believed to have played a part in the issue.
Erdoğan did not elaborate on his scheduled meeting with Armenia’s President Serzh Sarksyan on the sidelines of the meeting in Washington and instead focused on the importance Turkey has attached to making progress in efforts by the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The Minsk Group has striven to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, a territorial dispute between Baku and Yerevan, for more than 17 years.
“The Minsk trio should be much more active, should exert efforts that would produce a result,” Erdoğan said, noting that he had discussed the issue earlier with Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. He also said he discussed the issue with French President Nicolas Sarkozy during an official visit to Paris last week.
France, Russia and the US are the three co-chairs of the Minsk Group.
TODAY’S ZAMAN ANKARA