ARMENIA URGES TURKEY TO OPEN BORDER
By Gareth Jones, Reuters
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
June 25 2007
Armenia appealed to Turkey on Monday to open their shared border,
saying this was the essential first step for making any progress on
historical disputes that divide the two countries.
Turkey closed the border in 1993 to protest against Armenia’s
occupation of territory inside Azerbaijan, Ankara’s close Turkic
ally. Ties between Ankara and Yerevan have also been strained by
Armenia’s claim — backed by many other countries — that its people
suffered a systematic genocide at Ottoman Turkish hands in 1915.
Turkey denies any genocide took place.
"First and foremost, to address the problematic issues between us,
we need as a bare minimum an open border between our two countries,"
Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian told a news conference
in Istanbul. "This is how civilized countries operate … The only
closed border on the European continent today is that between Turkey
and Armenia."
But Oskanian, in Istanbul for a meeting of the Black Sea Economic
Cooperation Organization (BSEC), said his talks with Turkish Foreign
Minister Abdullah Gul on Monday gave little ground for hope. "There
is no change in the Turkish position," he said, adding that Armenia
hoped that after July 22 elections in Turkey a new government might
be ready to review the border policy.
Ankara says Armenia must first reach a peace settlement with Azerbaijan
over the disputed province of Karabakh, an enclave populated by ethnic
Armenians inside Azeri territory. On the genocide issue, Turkey has
proposed forming a joint commission of Turkish, Armenian and other
historians to investigate the events of 1915 and to determine whether
they constituted genocide.
Ankara acknowledges that large numbers of Armenians living in
Turkey were killed or deported during that period, but not in
a systematic genocide. It says many Muslim Turks also perished in
fierce inter-ethnic conflict as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.
Oskanian said Armenia would consider taking part in such a commission
if the border were opened and normal diplomatic ties established
between the two countries. But he also criticized the Turkish
commission proposal, saying it was an attempt to discourage parliaments
around the world from recognizing the Armenian massacres as genocide.
Turkey fears the U.S. Congress may in the coming months approve a
resolution recognizing the killings as genocide, following the lead
of the European Parliament and legislatures in France, Russia, Greece,
Canada and many other countries.
In Turkey, asserting that there was an Armenian genocide is a crime.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
