SEMNEBY: TURKEY TOOK "TACTICAL STEP BACKWARDS" ON NORMALIZING RELATIONS WITH ARMENIA

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
18.06.2009 11:01 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkey has taken a "tactical step backwards"
on normalizing relations with Armenia because of hostile domestic
reaction to the move, the EU’s envoy to the region said in an interview
with Reuters.

"A step back was taken by the Turkish side … but this is not a
U-turn," said EU South Caucasus envoy Peter Semneby. "We expect the
conversations will continue."

After decades of hostility, Muslim Turkey and Christian Armenia
announced in April a "roadmap" for re-establishing diplomatic relations
and opening their shared border.

But Ankara’s Muslim ally Azerbaijan said Armenia should first leave
Nagorno-Karabakh, a mostly ethnic Armenian enclave which broke away
after fighting a bloody war with Azerbaijan in the 1990s and claims
independence.

Turkey then offered support for the Azeri position, complicating
further progress in talks with Armenia.

Semneby said in the interview, conducted at the end of a visit to
Moscow last week, that it was important the "pause" in the peace
process between Turkey and Armenia did not last too long because of
the risk that impetus would be lost.

"The normalization (with Armenia) became the subject of quite
widespread and heated discussion in Turkey," he added in earlier
remarks to a small group of reporters. "It seems to me, this discussion
became more heated than was expected." Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan promised Azerbaijan during a visit to Baku last month that
Ankara would not open its border with Armenia – closed since 1993 –
until Armenia ended what he termed its occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh.

"I see this as a Turkish tactical step backwards," Semneby told
Reuters. "But fundamentally, the new foreign policy that has been
pursued by the Erdogan government, I don’t see that this policy
is changing."