Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu

YEREVAN—It has been four years since the signing of the Armenian-Turkish Protocols, yet the Turkish side continues to offer the “same old song”, says spokesman for the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tigran Balayan, commenting on a recent statement from the Turkish Foreign Minister.

“This is nothing but a continuation of Turkey’s efforts to hide its failure to ratify and implement the protocols without any preconditions, something expected by the international community,” the spokesman said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said Thursday that “Turkey is looking for creative ideas to develop relations with Armenia,” adding that Ankara is giving a lot of importance to the normalization of ties, the Hurriyet Daily News reports.

Coincidentally speaking in Switzerland, where both countries signed a landmark protocol four years ago to the day, Davutoğlu said Turkey would increase efforts on the issue in the coming months.

“We made serious efforts to put the protocol into effect four years ago. However, we were not able to implement it because of the decision of the Armenian Constitutional Court,” Davutoğlu said during a joint press conference in Bern with his Swiss counterpart, Didier Burkhalter.

He was referring to the Armenian supreme court’s decision to mandate that the protocol agreement not contradict Yerevan’s efforts to have the mass killings of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 recognized as genocide.

“Now we are looking to develop it and advance with creative ideas and new ways of thinking. We will increase our works in the coming period. When relations between Turkey and Armenia are normalized, most of the issues between Azerbaijan and Armenia will also be within the framework of a solution,” Davutoğlu said.

The 2009 protocol aimed to boost ties between Ankara and Yerevan with a series of measures, including the opening of the countries’ border, a move that Azerbaijan has repeatedly said must not happen until there is an agreement on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh.