Hürriyet, Turkey
Sunday, July 06, 2008 00:32
Armenia’s Sarkisian invites Turkish president to watch football game
Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian has invited Turkish President
Abdullah Gul to watch a football match in Yerevan, a spokesman told
AFP on Saturday. Turkey and Armenia has no diplomatic relations since
Yerevan invaded Azerbaijani province of Nagorny Karabakh.
"The president has invited Turkish President Abdullah Gul to visit
Armenia on September 6 to watch the World Cup qualifying match between
Armenia and Turkey," Sarkisian’s spokesman, Samvel Farmanyan, told
AFP.
Gul had congratulated Sarkisian after his election victory in
February.
Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic links since Ankara intensified
its protests against Armenian invasion and violence in the
Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Armenia invaded in a war with
Azerbaijan in the early 1990s. The border between Turkey and Armenia
has been closed.
There have been recent calls to reopen the border between ex-Soviet
Armenia and Turkey to help growing trade ties between the two, which
are currently conducted through third countries such as Georgia.
Armenia, with the backing of the Diaspora, claims up to 1.5 million of
their kin were slaughtered in orchestrated killings in 1915. Turkey
rejects the claims, saying that 300,000 Armenians along with at least
as many Turks died in civil strife that emerged when the Armenians
took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia.