TURKISH FORMIN SAYS SENT DIALOGUE LETTER TO ARMENIA
by Selcuk Gokoluk

Reuters
April 21 2008
UK

ANKARA, April 21 (Reuters) – Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan
said on Monday he had sent a letter to Yerevan calling for dialogue
with Armenia and saying Turkey wanted to normalise ties between the
two countries.

Ankara has no diplomatic relations with Armenia and keeps its land
border closed in protest at the situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh
region, which broke away from Azerbaijan as the Soviet Union fell
apart. It is run by ethnic Armenian separatists but is not recognised
by any state.

"Turkey desires to normalise its relations with Armenia. Turkey is
keeping channels of dialogue open with the new Armenian government,"
Babacan told a news conference.

Armenia and Turkey are also at loggerheads over Ankara’s rejection of
Armenian claims, backed by many Western historians, that massacres of
Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War One amounted to genocide.

Ankara says large numbers of both Christian Armenians and Muslims
Turks were killed during the violent break-up of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul congratulated Armenian President Serzh
Sarksyan on his election win in February and said he hoped for an
improvement in relations.

The tiny ex-Soviet republic of Armenia is sandwiched between Turkey
and Azerbaijan in a region that is emerging as an important transit
route for oil exports from the Caspian Sea to world markets, though
Armenia has no pipeline of its own.

Turkey was among the first countries to recognize Armenia’s
independence after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union but has no
diplomatic ties due to Armenia’s occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh,
a slice of Azeri territory populated by ethnic Armenians.