RISING HOPES OF BETTER RELATIONS BETWEEN TWO HISTORIC ENEMIES

The Economist
Sep 25th 2008
Ankara And Yerevan

Friends and neighbours

KEMAL ATATURK , father of modern Turkey, rescued hundreds of Armenian
women and children from mass slaughter by Ottoman forces during
and after the first world war. This untold story, which is sure
to surprise many of today’s Turks, is one of many collected by the
Armenian genocide museum in Yerevan that "will soon be brought to
light on our website," promises Hayk Demoyan, its director.

His project is one more example of shifting relations between Turkey
and Armenia. On September 6th President Abdullah Gul became the first
Turkish leader to visit Armenia when he attended a football match. Mr
Gul’s decision to accept an invitation from Armenia’s president,
Serzh Sarkisian, has raised expectations that Turkey may establish
diplomatic ties and open the border it closed during the 1990s fighting
between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. The two foreign
ministers were planning to meet in New York this week. Armenia promises
to recognise Turkey’s borders and to allow a commission of historians
to investigate the fate of the Ottoman Armenians.

Reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia could tilt the balance of
power in the Caucasus. Russia is Armenia’s closest regional ally. It
has two bases and around 2,000 troops there. The war in Georgia has
forced Armenia to rethink its position. Some 70% of its supplies flow
through Georgia, and these were disrupted by Russian bombing. Peace
with Turkey would give Armenia a new outside link. Some think Russia
would be happy too. "It would allow Russia to marginalise and lean
harder on Georgia," argues Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the
Caucasus Media Institute.

Mending fences with Armenia would bolster Turkey’s regional
clout. And it might also help to kill a resolution proposed by the
American Congress to call the slaughter of the Armenians in 1915
genocide. That makes the Armenian diaspora, which is campaigning for
genocide recognition, unhappy.

Some speak of a "Turkish trap" aimed at rewriting history to absolve
Turkey of wrongdoing. Indeed, hawks in Turkey are pressing Armenia
to drop all talk of genocide.

Even more ambitiously, the hawks want better ties with Armenia to
be tied anew to progress over Nagorno-Karabakh. But at least Mr Gul
seems determined to press ahead. "If we allow the dynamics that were
set in motion by the Yerevan match to slip away, we may have to wait
another 15-20 years for a similar chance to arise," he has said.