Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Sept 8 2008

Soccer sows seeds of new era between Turkey and Armenia

President Abdullah Gül’s brief yet still landmark visit to
Armenia raised hopes for dialogue that could eventually restore
relations between the two estranged neighbors and help bury an almost
a century old hostility over history.

"My visit broke psychological barriers in the Caucasus," Gül
told reporters on his way back to Turkey on Saturday night after
watching a World Cup qualifying match between the national teams of
the two countries in Hrazdan Stadium. During his brief stay in
Yerevan, Gül also had a one-and-a-half-hour meeting with his
Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sarksyan, who had invited him to watch the
game.

The visit has huge symbolic importance: It is the first time ever
a Turkish president has set foot in Armenia since it declared
independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. It is also a landmark step
because Turkey and Armenia have had no formal ties since 1993, when
Turkey severed relations and closed its border with Armenia in protest
of Armenian occupation of a chunk of Azerbaijani territory over a
dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh. But the origins of dispute go much
deeper in history. Armenia claims the Ottoman Turks killed 1.5 million
Armenians in eastern Anatolia during the World War I years as part of
a systematic campaign of genocide.

Both Gül and Sarksyan were hopeful that the visit could
break the ice and open the way for dialogue to resolve
differences. "We hope we will be able to demonstrate goodwill to solve
the problems between our countries and not leave them to future
generations," Sarksyan told a news conference after meeting with
Gül on Saturday. Gül, alongside Sarksyan, said he was
"leaving optimistic."

"If we create a good atmosphere and climate for this process, this
will be a great achievement, and will also benefit stability and
cooperation in the Caucasus," he told reporters after the game, which
Turkey won 2-0.

Sarksyan said he would attend the return match in Turkey in October
2009, and that the invitation to do so suggested Gül "also has
some expectations that there will be some movement between these two
meetings."

Gül left Foreign Minister Ali Babacan in Yerevan for several
more hours for "technical discussions" with his Armenian counterpart,
Eduard Nalbandiyan, on how to normalize ties. There was no statement
on their talks, which lasted into the early hours of Sunday morning,
but diplomatic sources said both sides had agreed at the meeting that
"full normalization" in relations must be achieved. Officials of the
two countries will meet again at UN General Assembly, scheduled for
the end of September, sources said, without specifying whether the
meeting will be at the presidential level.

A report in daily Hürriyet said yesterday that the regular
consulting mechanism between Turkey and Armenia will be improved and
that negotiations between the two countries will be raised to the
foreign ministerial level.

The report also said the efforts to establish a joint commission of
historians for resolving the dispute over Armenian claims of genocide
would speed up and that a separate commission would be formed to
address the economic field. In 2005, Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip ErdoÄ?an took a first step towards resolving the issue by
proposing that a joint commission of historians launch an
investigation and publish their conclusions, but the proposal was
rejected by Yerevan.

Sarksyan raises Nagorno-Karabakh, no mention of `genocide’

Gül, speaking aboard the plane en route to Turkey, said there
was not even a veiled reference to the "genocide" issue during his
talks with Sarksyan. In contrast, the Armenian president raised the
issue of Nagorno-Karabakh, Gül said. "I wasn’t expecting we
would discuss the issue at such length," he added.

The Azerbaijani government has refrained from publicly criticizing the
visit, but politicians and newspapers lamented what they see as a
"betrayal" of the alliance with Turkey. But others say Turkish
dialogue with Armenia could help a solution in the Nagorno-Karabakh
dispute, a row that has remained unresolved for 15 years.

Turkish officials have said they were in contact with Azerbaijani
officials and that they have raised no objection to Gül’s visit
to Armenia.

Gül also said on Saturday night that the issue of opening the
border was not on the agenda of the talks. "If this atmosphere is
maintained, everything will be back on track, will normalize. But
there is no such thing at this moment," he said. In an interview
earlier, Babacan also indicated that reopening the border with
Armenia, a major barrier to the landlocked state’s economic
development, may take longer, noting that the closure was linked to
the Armenian military presence in Azerbaijan.

Gül flew to Armenia and the official vehicles Gül and
the Turkish delegation used during their stay in Yerevan traveled to
Armenia through Georgia, instead of by way of the closed border.

The government’s initiative to have contacts with Armenia, which
received serious criticism from the opposition parties at home, has
gained new impetus since Russia’s war with Georgia last month, which
raised fears for the security of energy supplies from the Caspian Sea
to Western Europe.

The establishment of normal relations could have huge significance for
Turkey’s role as a regional power, for energy flows from the Caspian
Sea and for Western influence in the South Caucasus. Landlocked
Armenia, a Soviet republic until 1991, could also derive enormous
benefit from the opening of the border with its large neighbor and the
restoration of a key rail link. Western-backed pipelines shipping oil
and gas from the Caspian Sea to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast bypass
Armenia and bend north instead to go through Georgia. With that route
looking vulnerable after the Russian intervention, Armenia could be an
attractive alternative.

"Now is the time to talk about the problems openly, boldly and to try
to find solutions," Babacan said in an interview with Reuters ahead of
Gül’s meeting with Sarksyan. "We don’t have diplomatic
relations right now with Armenia. What are we going to do about that?
That’s another issue for discussion."

Asked whether a restoration of ties could be an outcome of the visit,
he said: "I don’t want to raise expectations that much. We are ready
for more dialogue. This all has to be discussed."
Ä°stanbul/Yerevan Today’s Zaman

08 September 2008, Monday
EKREM DUMANLI / SÃ`LEYMAN KURT YEREVAN