COLD WAR HAUNTS ARMENIAN BORDER
By Mark Grigoryan

BBC NEWS
8016819.stm
2009/04/24 14:41:48 GMT

Armenia has been commemorating the 1915 mass killings of Armenians by
Ottoman Turks – and a Cold War-style closed border remains a symbol
of that deep scar.

The Armenia-Turkey border, laced with barbed wire, has been shut since
1927 – except for a very short period at the beginning of the 1990s.

Not even the North-South Korea border has been shut for as long as
this one, analysts note. It has military installations dating back
to the darkest days of the Cold War.

A derelict crane has become a new home for storks, their big nests
precariously balanced among the struts.

The border is very strictly watched from both sides – Turkish guards
facing Russian guards on the Armenian side.

Armenia has mandated Russia to protect its borders with Turkey to
the west and Iran to the south.

Hints of a thaw

But earlier this week, Turkey and Armenia announced what amounted to
a roadmap for an historic reconciliation.

There are no diplomatic relations between them. The conflict
in Nagorno-Karabakh and the demand from Armenia and the Armenian
diaspora for the 1915 massacres in Ottoman Turkey to be recognised as
"genocide", are the main reasons.

Turkey wants its talks with Armenia to be conducted in parallel with
negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh,
the disputed territory where the two nations fought a war in the
early 1990s.

Populated by ethnic Armenians, it lies outside Armenia’s borders,
within territory internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan.

Last September, President Abdullah Gul became the first Turkish
leader to visit Armenia, when he attended a World Cup qualifying
match in Yerevan.

The joint public appearance of President Gul alongside the Armenian
President, Serzh Sarkisian, was controversial and criticised by
hardliners in both countries. But it marked what could become a
fundamental shift in relations between the two countries.

President Sarkisian this week reiterated his view that recognition
of the killings as "genocide" by Turkey "is not a precondition for
establishing bilateral relations".

The absence of diplomatic relations means no free trade and almost no
cultural exchanges between the two countries. The isolation exacerbates
Armenia’s difficult economic situation; and it complicates the wider
geopolitical situation in an already tense region.

Isolated from Europe

During the Soviet period it was the most strictly guarded border of the
USSR, as Turkey was a member of Nato. But even after the USSR collapsed
and Armenia gained its independence, the border remained firmly shut.

Seen from Armenia, the border is "the closed gate to Europe".

People on either side live isolated from one another. Their villages
are geographically very close, yet they cannot move freely and
develop normal relations. It strongly influences how they perceive
their lives and "the other side".

In Bagaran village, on the Armenian side of the border, I heard a woman
tell me that her dream was not to go to Paris, but merely across the
border for half an hour – "to see how they live there".

The physical border is actually just a small mountainous river – the
Arax – that separates the two countries. To cross the river you must
travel north to Georgia, and then back south from the other side of
the border.

And though the countries agreed this week to a "roadmap" which would
normalise relations between them, the shortest and most direct road
link – across the shared border – remains for now firmly shut.