ARMENIA RESPONDS TO GUL’S REMARKS IN AZERBAIJAN
Suleyman Kurt Ankara
Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Nov 12 2007
Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan has reiterated that his
country is ready to normalize its relations with Turkey without
any precondition, but added Yerevan would reject any "imposition"
by Turkey or Azerbaijan.
Sargsyan’s remarks, made at a congress of his political party on
Saturday during which he was nominated as a candidate for presidency
for the February 2008 elections, came after Turkish President Abdullah
Gul pledged solidarity with Azerbaijan during a visit there last
week. Turkey severed formal ties with Armenia after Armenian troops
occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan,
in the past decade. Ankara now says normalization of relations
with Armenia depends on the withdrawal of Armenian troops from
Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as Yerevan’s stopping efforts to win
international recognition for claims of an Armenian genocide at the
hands of the late Ottoman Empire and formally recognize the current
borders.
In veiled remarks widely interpreted as directed at Armenia, Gul said,
while examining a sword given to him as a gift during his visit to
Azerbaijan, that one should always be ready to draw his sword in
a region like the Caucasus. Gul, addressing a special session of
Azerbaijani Parliament on Wednesday, said as long as Yerevan insists
on continuing its efforts for designation of the World War I era
killings of Anatolian Armenians as "genocide" by the parliaments
of third countries, it cannot expect any development concerning the
normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey.
"We will not let Turkey and Azerbaijan impose their will on us,"
Sargsyan told the party meeting in remarks apparently aimed at
responding to Gul. "We are ready to restart relations with Turkey
without any precondition."
Turkey, which denies charges of genocide, has called for a joint
study of the Ottoman archives to discover what happened in the past,
but Armenia refuses the offer, claiming that it is undisputed that
what happened was genocide. Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of
their kin were slaughtered in orchestrated killings during the last
years of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey categorically rejects the claims,
saying that 300,000 Armenians along with at least as many Turks died
in civil strife which emerged when the Armenians took up arms for
independence in eastern Anatolia and sided with the Russian troops
who were invading Ottoman lands.