Turkish President Abdullah Gul initiated a phone conversation with his Russian counterpart Saturday during which, as reported by Dmitry Medvedev’s press service, the sides also touched on the Nagorno-Karabakh process and confirmed the Russian leader’s visit to Turkey in May.

According to the Russian president’s official web portal (www.kremlin.ru), the two presidents “discussed Russo-Turkish cooperation in international affairs” and “while exchanging views on the situation in the South Caucasus, Mr. Gul praised Russia’s contribution to international efforts to achieve progress in the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement.”

“Both sides expressed satisfaction with their joint work in the Black Sea region and touched on issues of European security, specifically in the context of Russia’s initiative to develop a European Security Treaty,” the brief statement said. “Both parties agree that a key upcoming event in the bilateral relations will be the visit of the President of Russia to Turkey, which was confirmed during the conversation as taking place in May this year.”

On January 25, President Medvedev in Sochi hosted a meeting of President Serzh Sargsyan of Armenia and President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan – the fifth in such a format in less than 15 months – during which, as reported by the Russian foreign minister, the sides signaled their ‘common understanding’ on what could be the preamble to the basic document on the Karabakh settlement commonly known as the Madrid principles. No other details of that meeting were released by any of the parties. The fresh Armenian-Azeri summit in the southern Russian resort town came amid what appears to be a stalling Armenian-Turkish rapprochement process. Ankara has repeatedly made its ratification of the 10/10/09 protocols with Armenia conditional on progress in the Karabakh settlement and assured its regional ethnic ally Azerbaijan that it won’t disregard its interest in dealing with Armenia. Official Yerevan, on the contrary, has insisted from Day One that it pursues its fence-mending policy in relations with Ankara unconditionally, meaning that Karabakh, just like the Armenian Genocide, cannot be a factor in the current Armenian-Turkish diplomacy – a position backed by all international sponsors of the process, including the United States.

This position of the Armenian leadership was reassured by the country’s Constitutional Court on January 12, which, while finding the Armenian-Turkish protocols constitutional, in particular, indicated that the diplomatic documents could not have any bearing on the developments in the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement process or Yerevan’s commitment to support the broader international recognition of World War I-era massacres of 1.5 million Armenians in Ottoman Turkey as genocide.

That ruling elicited an angry reaction in Turkey and led to Turkish “complaints” to the United States and calls on Yerevan for explanations. Washington, however, effectively upheld Yerevan’s position that the Constitutional Court ruling did not interfere with the protocols process and again urged the sides to speed up the ratification processes in their parliaments.

The top diplomats of Armenia, Turkey and the United States held separate brief meetings on the sidelines of the conference on Afghanistan in London last week that focused on the latest developments.

According to the Armenian Foreign Ministry, while their meeting in the British capital on January 28 US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton assured Armenian FM Edward Nalbandyan that the United States will continue to support an unconditional Armenian-Turkish normalization and a speedy ratification of the protocols signed by the two countries last year. Nalbandyan, for his part, reportedly said that the recent ruling of the Armenian Constitutional Court only testifies to “the Armenian leadership’s commitment to the letter and spirit of the protocols.”