Sunday’s Zaman
27 September 2009, Sunday

Prime Minister ErdoÄ?an addresses UN General Assembly

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an and US President Barack
Obama made a toast at an annual luncheon hosted by UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday during the 64th UN General
Assembly.

ErdoÄ?an also addressed the General Assembly on Thursday.

During a visit to the US this past week, ErdoÄ?an stated that he
expects to present Parliament with documents to establish diplomatic
ties with Armenia by early October, just before a critical meeting
between the two nations’ leaders. ErdoÄ?an, in a wide-ranging
foreign policy speech before faculty and students at Princeton
University, said the negotiations `have really taken us to an
important position.’ Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic ties and
share a history of animosity stemming from the killings of Anatolian
Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I. Turkey denies the 1915
killings amounted to genocide but has agreed to set up a commission of
international experts on the issue under the protocol it signed with
Armenia.

In his speech ErdoÄ?an also touched upon his government’s
democratization initiative, which ultimately aims to reach a
comprehensive resolution to the decades-old Kurdish question by
granting more rights to the country’s Kurdish citizens.

`We have set off to resolve problems regarding the rule of law,
democracy and human rights,’ ErdoÄ?an said. Recalling steps that
have been taken so far, such as lifting bans on teaching and
broadcasting in Kurdish and the presence of a new state-run Kurdish
television station, ErdoÄ?an added that a new step was recently
taken, referring to the approval of teaching the Kurdish language as
part of the establishment of a `living languages’ institute at a state
university in Mardin.

27 September 2009, Sunday