Armenian MPs adopt 'exit strategy' on Turkey accords

The amendments, passed by a vote of 70-4, will allow President Serge Sarkisian to suspend ratification and withdraw from previously signed international agreements.

The move comes amid growing frustration in Armenia over the Turkish parliament's failure to ratify two protocols signed in October to establish diplomatic ties and open the Armenian-Turkish border.

"The need for these amendments obviously stems from the current situation with the process of ratification of the Armenia-Turkey protocols," the chairman of parliament's foreign affairs committee, Armen Rustamian, said.

"Existing tools are not sufficient to protect our interests and these changes create such a legal basis. ... Armenia is today facing such problems that it may withdraw from the process. We are now developing an exit strategy," he told parliament.

The signing of the deals was hailed internationally as a key step in overcoming decades of enmity stemming from World War I-era deaths of Armenians under Ottoman Turks.

But ratification by both countries' parliaments has stalled as the two sides have traded accusations of trying to modify the deal.

Ankara has accused Yerevan of trying to set new conditions after Armenia's constitutional court said the protocols could not contradict Yerevan's official position that the Armenian mass killings constituted genocide — a label Turkey fiercely rejects.

Armenia, for its part, is furious over Ankara's insistence that normalizing Turkish-Armenian ties depends on progress in resolving the conflict between Armenia and Turkish ally Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in solidarity with Azerbaijan after ethnic Armenian forces wrested Nagorno-Karabakh from Baku's control in a war that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives.

The conflict remains unresolved despite years of international mediation.

/Hurriyet Daily News/