KINIKLIOGLU: WE PASS TURKISH CONCERNS TO ARMENIANS

Today’s Zaman
May 27 2009
Turkey

Suat Kiniklioglu, member of Parliament and deputy chairman of external
affairs for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party),
has said a workshop like this week’s Turkey-Armenia relations gives
an opportunity to Turkey to talk about concerns of the both sides
as the process of rapprochement with Armenia continues. "We want
to share the concerns in Turkey here. Even from the language used
at the workshop we see that we don’t know each other well. We talk
about Turkey-Armenia relations as well as Azerbaijan’s role in it
in the context of regional dynamics," said Kiniklioglu yesterday at
Turkey-Armenia Relations Workshop organized by the Foundation for
Political Economic and Social Research (SETA).

Asked about the influence of the Karabakh issue in that regard,
Kiniklioglu said there is parallel process to the Turkey-Armenia
negotiations on the issue taken by the Minsk group. "The process
is parallel and they support each other. But these are difficult
topics. They would have been solved in 16 or 17 if they were easy,"
he said. "Turkey has good relations with both Azerbaijan and Georgia,
and wants to add Armenia into this. News of the normalization process
with Armenia affects Karabakh but the film is continuing and there
will be developments, hopefully positive." He also indicated that
normalization of relations with Armenia and resolution to the Karabakh
conflict are both "mutually reinforcing each other and interacting."

Attending the workshop Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the Caucasus
Institute based in Yerevan, said that they don’t expect that the
border between Armenia and Turkey will be open soon, closed by Turkey
in 1993 protesting the Armenian occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh in
Azerbaijan. "We don’t expect that the border will be open in a short
period of time but once the border opens historical dimension of
Turkey-Armenia relations will not be so much important," he said.

Most of the participants at the workshop indicated that a closed
border with Armenia, "an anomaly of the Cold War years," should be
corrected, and this is the last legacy of the Soviet Union as NATO
member Turkey faces a closed border.

Bulent Aras from SETA said the Cold War has been continuing in the
Caucasus although it ended in the rest of the world. Yonca Poyraz
Dogan Istanbul