Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes the events in and around Turkey that followed the previous parliamentary elections will force voters to ‘prefer stability and security’ by giving a larger amount of votes to the ruling party in the forthcoming snap elections.
Turkish analyst Ozgur Unluhisarcikli is confident Erdogan’s expectations will not come true. He says polls show the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) will retain and even increase the number of votes.
The expert is confident that the ruling party will again fail to gain majority and will have to form a coalition.
Whether the future agenda of Armenian-Turkish relations is positive or negative will depend on this coalition, he believes. According to Unluhisarcikli, Turkey is likely to develop a positive agenda if the HDP forms part of it.
The expert is assured that if talks between Armenia and Turkey resume, the bilateral relations should be clearly separated from two factors – the ‘1915 events’ and the Armenian-Azerbaijani disagreements.
Armenian analysts consider there is no ground for positive expectations today. Expert of the Analytical Centre on Globalization and Regional Cooperation David Shahnazaryan says any initiative should come from Turkey, as it was there that the Zurich protocols ‘faded.”
Today’s conference dedicated to the Armenian-Turkish relations was organized by the Analytical Centre on Globalization and Regional Cooperation with financial assistance of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
