ARMENIA, TURKEY: ECONOMIC CRISIS WARMS TURKS TO OPENING OF BORDER
Monday Morning
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May 12 2009
Lebanon
The border’s closure in 1993 — ordered by Turkey to back Azerbaijan
in a territorial conflict with Armenia — has had heavy economic
consequences not only for Armenia but also the Turkish city of 80,000.
The border crossing, some 70 kilometers away, was once massively used
to export cattle — Kars’ main wealth — to the Caucasus and Russia
through the only railway linking Turkey to its northern neighbors.
The halt of trade has cost the province of Kars nearly one-twelfth
of its population, which dropped from 356,000 to 326,000 between 1990
and 2000.
The prospect of re-opening the border, boosted by ongoing talks
between Ankara and Yerevan, has become even more important now that
the global economic turmoil is biting Turkey, sending unemployment
up and slowing down the economy.
"Of the 300 members of the chamber of commerce, 280 believe the border
should be opened immediately", said Fuat Doganay, owner of the largest
restaurant in Kars.
"Business has gone down… I have to save my business and pay my
debts. The government has to understand that", he said.
Many there believe Turkey’s embargo is hurting Kars more than Armenia
as Armenians can fly to Istanbul to work and shop, and Turkish products
end up in Armenia via Georgia.
Kaan Soyak, co-chairman of a Turkish-Armenian business group, said
the annual volume of bilateral trade — mostly via Georgia — stood
at around 100 million dollars.
With the expected re-opening of the border "we expect the exchanges
to immediately reach four to five billion dollars per year", Soyak
explained, buoyed by the announcement on April 28 that Ankara and
Yerevan had agreed a "road map" on normalizing ties.
Kars businessman Alican Alibeyoglu complained that Turkish
entrepreneurs were worst affected by the entangled political problems
in the region.
"I have been to Georgia and Armenia many times. In both countries
I saw hundreds of joint businesses between Armenians and Azeris,
but when it comes to Turkey, it is not possible", he grumbled,
adding that 50,000 people in Kars signed a petition in 2004 for the
re-opening of the border.
The sealed frontier however is not the only problem: Yerevan claims
that up to 1.5 million of Armenians were victims of "genocide" at
the hands of Ottoman Turks during World War I.
Ankara, which categorically rejects the accusation, has refused to
establish diplomatic ties with Yerevan until it drops its international
campaign to have the killings recognized as "genocide".
During a visit to Turkey in early April, US President Barack Obama
encouraged the dialogue between the two neighbors and called for a
swift normalization of ties.
Obama said reckoning with the past was the best way for the Turkish
and Armenian peoples to work through their "painful history" in a
"way that is honest, open and constructive".
But such appeals fail to impress many in Kars, which is home to
several thousand Turks of Azeri origin.
"The Armenians have to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh problem", said Ali
Guvensoy, head of the Kars Chamber of Commerce, referring to the
Armenian-majority enclave which broke away from Azerbaijan in the
early 1990s.
"They also have to stop putting allegations of genocide on the table",
he added, summarizing Ankara’s official line on the dispute.
But Soyak, who has for years campaigned for Turkish-Armenian
reconciliation, was optimistic.
"We expect a happy ending soon… We expect a settlement within three
or four months," he predicted.
The businessman stressed Azerbaijan’s inclusion into the fence-mending
process was essential "if we want a full economic development" in
the region.
"I think it is going to be step by step: first normalization of
relations between Turkey and Armenia… The next step will be to
include Azerbaijan".