GUL EXTENDS OLIVE BRANCH TO TURKEY’S LAST ‘ENEMY’

Today’s Zaman
Sept 5 2008
Turkey

President Abdullah Gul was welcomed warmly in the central Anatolian
province of Sivas during a visit on Thursday.

President Abdullah Gul has finally ended a guessing game on whether
he will accept an invitation from his Armenian counterpart, Serzh
Sarksyan, and announced that he will watch a World Cup qualifying game
between the Turkish and Armenian national teams in Yerevan on Saturday.

Given the current status of relations with Armenia — there have
been no formal ties between the two neighbors since 1993 — it was
no surprise that it took some time for Gul to decide whether to go
to Armenia. Though officials are trying to play down impact the visit
will have on relations that have been on ice for more than a decade,
expectations are high that it will be a huge leap in restoring dialogue
with Armenia, the last "enemy neighbor."

Over the past decade, Turkey has turned long-standing rivalries
with Greece, Iran and Syria into cooperation. Gul, the first Turkish
president ever to visit Armenia since it declared independence from
the Soviet Union in 1991, will meet with Sarksyan for about an hour
at the Armenian presidential palace ahead of the match in Yerevan’s
Hrazdan Stadium. Minutes before the two leaders head for the stadium,
Gul will break his Ramadan fast at a dinner hosted by Sarksyan. He
will return after watching the game.

"We believe this match will be instrumental in removing the barriers
blocking rapprochement between the two peoples with a common history
and prepare new ground," a statement on the president’s official Web
site said on Wednesday. "We hope this will be an opportunity for the
two peoples to understand each other better," it said.

Turkish officials say three issues will be raised by the Turkish side
during the meeting: a Turkish proposal to create a Caucasus Stability
and Cooperation Platform, a mechanism that will also include Armenia;
the problematic issue of Armenian occupation in the Azerbaijani
territory of Nagorno-Karabakh; and a Turkish call for establishing
a joint team of Turkish and Armenian scholars to investigate events
of World War I in eastern Anatolia, which Armenians claim amounted
to genocide but Ankara says were losses on both sides as Armenians
took up arms to revolt against the Ottoman Empire while seeking an
independent state of their own. Yerevan has already said it welcomed
Turkey’s Caucasus platform proposal, introduced after a brief war
between Georgia and Russia in August following a Georgian offensive
in the breakaway region of South Ossetia. The scheme is planned to
include Turkey, Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Despite widespread domestic and international approval for Gul’s visit,
there are concerns that contacts between Turkey and Armenia could
spoil ties with Azerbaijan, a regional ally. In an apparent attempt
to assure Azerbaijan that its interests will not be compromised, Gul
is preparing to visit Azerbaijan in the coming weeks, officials told
Today’s Zaman. No exact date was given, but the visit to Azerbaijan
is expected to take place before Gul flies to the United States
in September.

Speaking on the sidelines of a four-way summit on the Middle East in
Syria, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he had spoken with
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and that Baku had no problem with
Gul going to Yerevan for the soccer game.

Azerbaijanis are divided on whether Gul’s visit should be condemned or
encouraged. Opponents see the rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia
at a time when Azerbaijani territory is still under Armenian occupation
as a betrayal of the alliance and brotherhood between Turkey and
Azerbaijan. Others say it may help resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute
if Turkey starts talking to Armenia about this deep-seated conflict.

Warning against high expectations for any breakthrough, officials
say Gul will "encourage" Armenia to pursue a settlement on the
Nagorno-Karabakh dispute on the basis of a set of principles proposed
by a group of international mediators.

Armenia says it is ready for diplomatic relations with Turkey without
any conditions, referring to the dispute on the genocide claims, and
wants the border, closed since 1993, to reopen. But Gul is expected
to dismiss any piecemeal approach in the restoration of relations and
call for a discussion of all issues pertaining to relations as a whole.

Gul will be greeted by Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian
at the airport and will proceed to the Armenian presidential palace
along a high-security route. The section of the stadium where Gul
will be watching the game will be protected by bulletproof glass as
a measure against a possible assassination attempt.

A Turkish delegation, headed by Foreign Ministry Deputy Undersecretary
Unal Ceviköz, had talks in Yerevan on Wednesday to discuss
arrangements for Gul’s visit and reportedly told Gul that security
measures taken by the Armenian side were satisfactory.

Representatives from international news agencies as well as French
newspapers Le Monde and Le Figaro will be on Gul’s plane to Yerevan.

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Yerevan excited, preparing for match with Turkey

Officials from the Armenian Football Federation (FFA) were yesterday
finishing up with preparations for an upcoming match between the
national football teams of Armenia and Turkey, an event that will
see the first-ever visit by a Turkish president to Yerevan.Ruben
Hayrapetian, the chairman of the FFA, yesterday told the Anatolia news
agency that the FFA had completed all preparations for the match and
that everybody was ready for it.

Executives from the FFA have stated that they expect the 52,000-seat
Hrazdan Stadium to be completely full during the match, saying 12,000
tickets have been sold to date and that 2,700 seats were allocated
to Turkish fans. More than 100 foreign correspondents, in addition to
60 domestic correspondents, have been accredited to watch the match,
the same executives said.

Armenian officials also noted that all necessary precautions have
been taken both for the period of time before and after the match,
the Anatolia news agency reported. The Turkish national team will stay
in the Golden Palace Hotel, which is a little outside of the Yerevan
city center, Anatolia said. Meanwhile, players of the Armenian national
team, speaking to Anatolia, expressed pleasure over Gul’s visit, while
noting that they were interested in sports, not in politics. Ankara
Today’s Zaman with wires

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