Agence France Presse — English
January 30, 2009 Friday 9:31 AM GMT
Erdogan, Armenian president hold landmark meeting
YEREVAN, Jan 30 2009
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Armenian President
Serzh Sarkisian have held their first bilateral talks as they seek to
end decades of enmity, the Armenian presidency said on Friday.
The meeting, held on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in
Davos on Thursday, was "positive", the Armenian presidency said in a
statement.
"President Sarkisian and Prime Minister Erdogan considered their first
meeting as positive and charged the foreign ministers of both
countries to put additional efforts into normalising relations," it
said.
Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic ties and their border has been
closed for more than a decade.
In September, Turkish President Abdullah Gul became the first Turkish
head of state to visit Armenia, boosting a tentative dialogue process
between the two countries.
Turkey was one of the first countries to recognise Armenia when it
gained independence in 1991 amid the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But Ankara has refused to establish diplomatic ties because of
Yerevan’s campaign to have mass killings of Armenians under the
Ottoman Empire during World War I classified as a genocide.
Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their people were systematically
killed by Ottoman Turks between 1915 and 1917 — a claim supported by
several other countries.
Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that between 300,000 and
500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife.
In 1993, Turkey also shut its border with Armenia in a show of
solidarity with ally Azerbaijan over Nagorny Karabakh, an
Armenian-majority enclave within Azerbaijan that declared
independence.