Agence France Presse
Sept 6 2008

Turkish president on historic trip to Armenia for football diplomacy

YEREVAN (AFP) ‘ Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul makes an historic trip
to Armenia Saturday to watch a football match and try to tackle
decades of animosity between the estranged neighbours.

Gul will meet with Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian before the World
Cup qualifier between Armenia and Turkey that is scheduled to begin at
9:00 pm (1600 GMT).

Under attack from the opposition at home, Gul only publicly accepted
Sarkisian’s invitation this week to attend the match and become the
first Turkish head of state to visit Armenia.

The two countries have no diplomatic relations and have waged a bitter
international diplomatic battle over Armenia’s attempts to have
massacres of their people under the Ottoman Empire classified as
genocide.

Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their people were killed in
orchestrated massacres during World War I as the Ottoman Empire fell
apart.

Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that 300,000-500,000
Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when
Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided
with invading Russian troops.

The trip will only last a few hours, but Gul and Sarkisian are
expected to hold talks on Turkey’s proposal for a Caucasus regional
security forum, trying to avoid contentious bilateral problems,
according to diplomatic sources.

Experts in both countries have stressed that this is just a cautious
first step.

"The Turkish president’s visit to Armenia is of huge importance," said
Yerevan-based political analyst Sergei Shakariants.

"But it is impossible to expect that a first meeting will be enough to
resolve problems that have endured for centuries. This meeting is a
simple first contact," he said.

"Gul’s visit is a bold move, but one should not expect much from it,"
said Cengiz Aktar, an international affairs expert at Istanbul’s
Bahcesehir University.

"First of all, there is no a real desire in Turkey to make peace with
Armenia and the atmosphere is not suitable for ground-breaking moves."

The Turkish government has adopted a cautious tone.

"The facts that we have do not support the theory that the visit will
resolve all the problems, but it is not right to assume that nothing
will come of it either," State Minister Mehmet Aydin was quoted by the
Anatolia news agency as saying.

Some Turkish fans began to arrive Friday for the match, including
student Pinar Akpinar, a member of the "Young Civilians," a
pro-democracy movement that called for Turkey’s closed border with
Armenia to be reopened for the match.

"The invitation by the Armenian president to Mr Gul is a very positive
development. We want to have normal relations with our neighbours,"
Akpinar said. "We think that we can overcome this question, that the
two people can together find a solution…. The people of the two
countries must assume their responsibilities and work together to put
an end to this animosity."

Turkey has refused to establish diplomatic ties with Armenia since the
former Soviet republic gained independence in 1991.

In 1993 Turkey also shut its border with Armenia in a show of
solidarity with its close ally Azerbaijan, then at war with Armenia
over Nagorny Karabakh, an Armenian-majority region in Azerbaijan which
declared independence.

The move dealt a heavy blow to Armenia, an impoverished nation
sandwiched between Turkey and Azerbaijan in the strategic Caucasus.