Tensions with Armenia figure in Azeri president’s visit to Turkey

BY BURAK AKINCI

AP ANKARA
April 12, 2004

A long-standing feud between two former Soviet republics over a
disputed enclave was expected to loom large in talks during a visit to
Turkey by Ilham Aliyev, president of Azerbaijan, starting Tuesday.

Azerbaijan and Turkey are neighbours with a shared Muslim and
linguistic heritage, and Aliyev was expected during his three-day stay
to urge Turkey not to reopen its border with Armenia.

Turkey closed this border in 1993 to help Azerbaijan’s negotiating
position in talks with its neighbour Armenia over the enclave of
Nagorny-Karabakh, situated within Azerbaijan’s borders but largely
populated by Armenians.

Azerbaijan now fears Turkey will reopen the border in order to please
the the European Union, which Turkey wants to join.

The feud sparked war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the early 1990s
when Nagorny-Karabakh seceded from Azeribaijan at the time of the
Soviet Union’s collapse, and the two Soviet Caucasian republics became
independent.

The war caused claimed more than 20,000 lives and made refugees of
nearly a million people.

After a ceasefire in 1994, Nagorny-Karabakh came under de facto
Armenian control.

Turkey recognises Armenia but has no diplomatic relations with it,
against a historic background of long-standing mutual bitterness.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in order to strengthen
Azerbaijan’s hand against Armenia.

But Aliyev, fearing Turkey will reopen it to please the EU, appealed
to Turkey last month, saying: “It’s no secret that the European Union
and other influential countries are pressuring Turkey to reopen its
border with Armenia.

“If that happened, the Nagorny-Karabakh conflict would never be
resolved.”

Several European countries have been calling for years for
normalisation between Turkey and Armenia.

Aliyev is worried about an EU meeting next December to decide whether
membership negotiations with Turkey should begin.

He warned in an interview with a Turkish newspaper that traditionally
warm relations between Turkey and Azerbaijan could deteriorate if the
frontier is reopened.

But he seems confident it will not happen. Azerbaijan holds a strong
card because Turkey is set to play a key role in Azerbaijan’s offshore
oil from the Caspian Sea.

A pipeline, operational from 2005, will ship up to one million barrels
of oil a day from Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, on the Caspian Sea,
through Georgia and Turkey to a tanker terminal at the Turkish
Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

The Turkish government led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has
adopted a diferent foreign policy from its predecessors, favouring new
openings towards neighbours.

But Nagorny Karabakh is not the only issue poisoning relations with
Turkey’s neighbour Armenia.

Turkey and Armenia remain at loggerheads over what Armenia says was
the genocide of hundreds of thousands of its people by Turks during
World War I.

Armenia says the killing and deportation by the Ottoman Empire between
1915 and 1917 claimed 1.5 million Armenian lives.

Turkey denies genocide, and says only between 250,000 and 500,000 died
as a result of the effects of civil war.