Armenian politicians gather from the responses of the Sargsyan-Erdogan meeting in Washington DC on April 12 that the faltering Armenian-Turkish normalization is moving closer towards suspension.

Analysts believe the more-than-an-hour-long meeting between Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Turkish Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erdogan held on the sideline of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington DC passed in a rather chilly and tense atmosphere.

“The statements made after the meeting prove that there is no progress and that there are still some differences, and the process is frozen,” specialist in Turkish studies, analyst Artak Shakaryan told ArmeniaNow.

According to Shakaryan, this suspension of the process will last for some two or three years, because elections (parliamentary) will be held in Turkey next year, and in 2012-13 parliamentary and presidential elections will be held in Armenia.

“And during the election campaigns both Armenia and Turkey will abstain from taking a step towards approaching each other, evading public discontent and criticism,” Shakaryan says.

Even before the Washington meeting, politicians in Armenia insisted that expectations were not high, and that only Turkey would benefit from it. Those who held that view continue to argue the same now.

“Before the meeting we were warning that it [the meeting] would be simply a ground for [US President Barack] Obama to avoid using the word Genocide [in his annual April 24 address on Armenian Genocide commemoration day]. The ground exists now, and Turkey has gained in this respect,” says Larisa Alaverdyan, a member of the opposition Heritage party’s parliamentary faction.

The Turkish prime minister announced at the George Mason University of Washington, “the history is not written in parliaments”, “it cannot be subject of parliaments’ condemnation”, so “the decisions made by parliaments would do no good to Armenia.”

The same day, April 12, President Sargsyan stated at the Washington Cathedral that “Armenia would not allow Turkey to speak the language of preconditions while talking to Armenia and Armenians.”