ARMENIAN ANALYSTS SPEAK OF TURKEY’S ELECTIONS

ARMENPRESS
Jul 18, 2007

YEREVAN, JULY 18, ARMENPRESS: A diplomat in Yerevan has reconfirmed
today Armenia’s willingness to normalize relations with neighboring
Turkey without preconditions.

Vladimir Karapetian, the acting head of the foreign ministry’s press
and information department, said the official Yerevan does not believe,
however, that Turkey’s foreign policy vector would change after the
July 22 extraordinary parliamentary elections.

"But despite the composition of future Turkish parliament Armenia
is ready to establish unconditioned diplomatic relations with it,"
he said.

Hayk Demoyan, director of the Yerevan-based Genocide Institute and
Museum, said he does not believe that the parliamentary elections in
Turkey would effect its policy of denying the 1915 Armenian genocide.

"It is possible that the party that wins the election may soften
Turkey’s official policy in regard to the Armenian genocide in a
self-establishment effort," Demoyan said, but he refused to comment on
media reports saying that the majority of Turkish Armenians are going
to vote for the governing Islamist-rooted Justice and Development
party of prime minister Recep Erdogan.

Ruben Safrastian, a prominent expert in Turkish studies and head of
the National Academy of Sciences affiliated Institute for Eastern
Studies, declined media speculations that the July 22 elections will
be a battle between pan-Islamic and pan-Turkic groups.

"The fight will be between Kemalists and Islamist political groups,’ he
said. According to him, the Justice and Development party stands better
chances to win the polls, but it will not have absolute majority.

Opinion polls in Turkey show that Erdogan’s party may win up to 40 per
cent of the vote, with the staunchly secularist Republican People’s
Party (CHP) coming second on about 20 per cent and the far-right
Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) on 10 to 15 per cent.