TURKEY, ARMENIA AGREE ON ‘ROAD MAP’ FOR NORMALIZING RELATIONS
By Michael Heath
Bloomberg
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April 23 (Bloomberg) — Turkey and Armenia agreed on a "road map"
to normalize relations, the Foreign Ministry in Ankara said after
reconciliation talks between the neighbors who share a bloody history
and whose border is shut.
The negotiations, mediated by Switzerland, "have achieved tangible
progress and mutual understanding," the ministry said in a statement
late yesterday. The announcement came as Armenia marks the anniversary
of the alleged genocide in 1915 of 1.5 million of its people by Turks
in ceremonies tomorrow.
Efforts at reconciliation between the two nations have gathered
momentum since President Abdullah Gul traveled to Armenia’s capital,
Yerevan, in September, the first visit to the country by a Turkish
head of state.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday she was "very
encouraged by the bold steps" being taken by Turkey and Armenia to
reconcile with each other and with their "painful past."
Steps toward "normalizing relations and opening their borders will
foster a better environment for confronting that shared, tragic
history," Clinton said in comments to the House Foreign Affairs
Committee in Washington.
The government in Yerevan has accused Turkey of genocide=2 0against
Armenians in the latter years of the Ottoman Empire, which preceded
modern Turkey. The Turkish government says massacres took place in
the context of clashes that related to Armenian groups supporting
Russia against Turkey during World War I.
Ottoman Archives
Turkish officials insist the killings weren’t orchestrated by the
Ottoman government and Gul has proposed opening Ottoman archives to
international scholars to try to resolve the dispute.
The French parliament supported the Armenian view that the killings
amounted to genocide. The lower house of parliament approved
a resolution in 2006 making it a crime to deny that genocide was
carried out against Armenians living in what is now Turkey in 1915.
The U.S. says declaring the killings as genocide would hurt relations
with an important ally.
Ties have been further strained by a conflict between Armenia
and Turkey’s ally, Azerbaijan. While Turkey recognized Armenia’s
independence in December 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed, it shut
the frontier in 1993 to protest the government in Yerevan’s support
for ethnic Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in their fight
for independence from Azerbaijan. A cease-fire has held since 1994.
Road Map
The Foreign Ministry said Turkey and Armenia "have agreed on a
comprehensive framework for the normalization of their bilateral
relations in a mutually satisfactory manner," according20to the
statement on its Web site. "In this context, a road map has been
identified."
Most Armenians oppose their government’s efforts to improve relations
with Turkey, the Istanbul-based Hurriyet newspaper reported a week ago,
citing a survey by the Ararat Stratejik Merkezi research center.
Sixty-one percent of respondents to the poll said they were against
closer ties with Turkey, Hurriyet said. Only 11 percent said they
support the government’s current policy, the newspaper reported,
without giving further details of the study.
To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Heath in Sydney at
[email protected].
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
