Open Letter to Ahmet Davutoglu | Asbarez News

YEREVAN—Professor Ara Papian, the director of the Modus Vivendi Center in Yerevan issued an open letter to Turkey Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. In the letter, Papian analyzes Davutoglu’s speech, last week, to parliament as he presented the protocols for ratification. Below is the complete text of the letter: Respected Minister, I read with interest the text of your speech of the 21st of October at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. My impressions were mixed. However, I mainly felt that you wished to present what was desirable, instead of what was real. To begin with, it was astonishing to hear of “occupation” from the foreign minister of a country which has itself been occupying 37% of the territory of Cyprus for more than three decades now, not to mention three-fourths of my homeland – the Republic of Armenia – for almost nine decades. I would like to stress that I am not referring to some abstract “Armenian lands,” but solely the territory granted to the Republic of Armenia through a document of international law, that is, the arbitral award of US President Woodrow Wilson of the 22nd of November, 1920. I shall elaborate on the arbitral award later, but for now I would simply like to say that, in accordance with international law, arbitral awards are “definitive and without appeal.”1