TURKISH-ARMENIAN FOOTBALL DIPLOMACYTURKISH PRESIDENT ABDULLAH GUL’S VISIT TO ARMENIA THIS WEEKEND SIGNALS THAT TENSIONS BETWEEN THE TWO COUNTRIES ARE COOLING
Stephen Kinzer

guardian.co.uk
Wednesday September 03 2008

The announcement this week that President Abdullah Gul of Turkey will
visit Armenia on Saturday suggests that the long and highly emotional
estrangement between these two neighbours might finally be ending.

That would be a spectacular breakthrough for both countries. Turkey
is assuming a new and promising role as a peacemaker in the Middle
East and the Caucasus, but cannot be fully effective as long as it is
feuding with a neighbour. Armenia is wretchedly poor and isolated,
and could begin to reconnect with the wider world through a new
partnership with Turkey.

There have never been high-level negotiations between these
two countries, so Gul’s visit can safely be described as
historic. Officially he is going to attend a football match between
Turkish and Armenian teams. He has let it be known, however, that
he intends to do some serious negotiating with his host, President
Serge Sarkisian.

"I met him in Kazahkstan," Gul told me in Istanbul last month. "I
told him, ‘We are the sons of this land, you see, and we have to
solve our problems, not with hostile feelings – we should not feed
hostile feelings.’ I saw him reasonable."

Turkey was among the first countries to recognise Armenia after
it became independent in 1990, but closed its land border three
years later after Armenian fighters seized the Nagorno-Karabakh
region of Azerbaijan. Gul is likely to discuss ways to resolve this
long-festering dispute.

Turkey is paying great attention to regional security issues these
days, and the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia has riveted
its attention. In its wake, Turkey has proposed that all countries in
the region join in a new Caucasian Stability and Cooperation Pact. Such
a pact, however, would not be credible without Armenia’s participation.

Turkey’s rise to regional-power status has been possible only because
it has dramatically improved its relations with its neighbours. Armenia
is the sole exception. For more than a decade, Turkey has sought to
isolate Armenia by keeping it out of regional groupings and cutting
it out of oil pipeline plans. Strategists in Ankara have concluded
that this policy is no longer viable. They now appear willing to
seek compromise.

Whether the two leaders can make substantial progress this weekend is
not the only uncertainty surrounding Gul’s trip. Armenian nationalists,
who match their Turkish counterparts in fanaticism, are outraged by
the prospect of his visit. Some may try to disrupt the match or set
off protests inside the stadium. Turkey’s ruling party has denied
permission for a group of its leading members to attend the match,
citing security concerns.

Youth groups from the two countries, though, are planning to stage
pro-peace demonstrations in and around the stadium. In Yerevan, the
effort is being led by young radio announcers, one of whom told a
Turkish newspaper that the time had come "to start dialogue and share
our pain". That led a Turkish group called Young Civilians to organise
a 50-member delegation that plans to wave peace banners at the stadium.

"We do not need official ideologies any more," the group said in
a statement. "There, in that stadium, we will stand shoulder to
shoulder."

Some of Turkey’s powerful military commanders are said to be troubled
by the idea of better Turkish-Armenian relations. So are some in the
Armenian disapora, who want Turkey to admit the role that Ottoman
leaders played in organising the massacre of Armenians in 1915. Within
Armenia, however, most people are focused on their own troubles. A poll
last year found that only 4% of Armenians think that what Turkey says
or does not say about the massacre 93 years ago should matter today.

The authorities in Yerevan had to rein in the diaspora this summer.

Armenian-Americans, who have powerful influence in Washington,
had managed for months to block the US Senate’s approval of a new
ambassador to Armenia because the nominee refused to describe the
killings of 1915 as genocide.

Armenian leaders, however, decided they needed an American ambassador
in Yerevan, and arranged for their friends in Washington to call off
their campaign and allow the new ambassador to be confirmed.

By agreeing to begin top-level discussions, Turkey and Armenia
are seeking to break the awful grip that history has on their
relationship. They are realising that better relations would have
dramatically positive effects on both sides of their long-sealed
border – and perhaps far beyond.