DAVUTOGLU SAYS OCTOBER WILL BE MONTH OF PEACE

Today’s Zaman
01 October 2009, Thursday

Davutoglu, who was in New York for the UN General Assembly last week,
held a press briefing in Ankara yesterday upon his return from the
United States. He said Turkey will help peace processes continue
regarding the Middle East, the South Caucasus, Pakistan and Afghanistan
in October.

Davutoglu, who was in New York for the UN General Assembly last week,
held a press briefing in Ankara yesterday upon his return from the
United States. He said Turkey will help peace processes continue
regarding the Middle East, the South Caucasus, Pakistan and Afghanistan
in October.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has said he expects the
month of October to be a "month of peace" while Turkey’s efforts are
under way in regards to peace in the Middle East, the Caucasus and
the Balkans.

Davutoglu, who was in New York for the UN General Assembly last week,
said in a press briefing in Ankara yesterday upon his return from
the United States that Turkey will do its best to prevent sanctions
against Iran from coming to the table.

"Sanctions would hurt the Iranian public as well as Iran’s neighbors
including Turkey. So we will speed up diplomatic efforts to prevent
the option of sanctions," he said.

Davutoglu and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan are expected
to go to Iran this month. The Iranian delegation will meet with
representatives of the five permanent UN Security Council members
and Germany in Geneva for talks on its nuclear program.

The Foreign Minister also said that he talked with Iranian Foreign
Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Monday and added that Iran assured the
international community that it will work with the UN nuclear watchdog,
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Today’s meeting in Geneva is expected to set the stage for progress in
resolving the standoff over the Islamic Republic’s refusal to freeze
uranium enrichment and heed other UN Security Council demands.

The US, Israel and the EU fea ram to develop nuclear weapons. But
Tehran says the program serves purely civilian purposes and that it
has the right to enrich uranium for use in nuclear power plants. The
talks will be the first since a 2008 session in Geneva foundered over
Iran’s refusal to discuss enrichment.

Davutoglu, who met Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari in New York,
also said that they have seen what sanctions brought to neighboring
Iraq. He and Zebari discussed Prime Minister Erdogan’s upcoming visit
to Baghdad which is scheduled to take place this month.

Upon a question from reporters regarding cooperation with Iraq in
solving Turkey’s terrorism problem with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’
Party (PKK), Davutoglu said there are a few areas of stress in fighting
terrorism and one of them is cooperation with Iraq.

"We have established very good relations with Iraq," he said and added
that another important area of emphasis is cooperation with the United
States. He said they had reviewed the cooperation agreement between
Turkey and the US under the previous George W. Bush administration
in New York with US President Barack Obama and US Foreign Minister
Hillary Clinton. Since late 2007, the US has been supplying Turkey
with real-time intelligence through which the Turkish military has
been conducting air raids on PKK targets in northern Iraq.

"We also attach importance to cooperation with the northern Iraqi
administration. This is a trilateral mechanism. And we will have our
next meeting in Arbil," he said.

In addition, he mentioned efforts to cooperate with Syria and the
countries of the European Union in that regard. "So all these efforts
show that we are engaged in active attempts to eliminate terrorism,"
he said.

Davutoglu also evaluated the month of October to be a "month of peace"
because of unexpected developments in the Caucasus. He said that there
are parallel developments to the Turkey-Armenia normalization process
as meetings between Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian
President Serzh kh, Azerbaijani territory occupied by Armenia, and
that this kind of development has not been seen in more than 10 years.

In separate meetings held on Monday on the sidelines of the UN General
Assembly, Clinton told the foreign ministers of the two countries
that they should proceed apace and not get bogged down by political
opposition to a deal, which they hope to seal by mid-October.

Prime Minister Erdogan announced on Sunday that Turkey and
Armenia would sign a deal in Zurich to establish diplomatic ties
on Oct. 10. But the agreement must be approved by the countries’
parliaments to take effect, and a major dispute remains over the
World War I-era killings of Anatolian Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire. Turkey insists that it was not genocide and that the death
toll has been inflated.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul attended a World Cup qualifier in
Yerevan last year in what was hailed as a breakthrough, but Sarksyan
has said he will only go to the game in Turkey if there’s progress
toward opening the border.

According to Davutoglu, the new process in southeast Europe is proof
of October being a "month of peace" as Turkey is going to host the
Oct. 8-9 South East European Cooperation ministerial meeting. During
that meeting Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina will sign an agreement on
confidence-building measures.

The initiative was launched in Sofia in July, 1996, during a
meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of South-East European
countries, which decided to start a long-term process of multilateral
cooperation among participating states. As of June 5, 2009 the
chairmanship-in-office of the South East European Cooperation Process
(SEECP) has been taken over by Turkey.

On Oct. 13 Davutoglu will pay a one-day visit to neighboring Syria, a
visit which involves a symbolic gesture reflecting remarkable progress
in bilateral relations between the two countries. Davutoglu and his
Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Moallem, signed an accord to end visa
requirements and signed a bilateral cooperation accord un e accord,
called the High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council Agreement, is
similar to the mechanism between Turkey and Iraq.

During the one day visit, Davutoglu and Moallem will hold the first
part of their meeting in Aleppo. The second part of the meeting will
be held in Gaziantep after the two ministers walk across the border.

Another development in October will be that Davutoglu and Erdogan
will go to Pakistan for an official visit on Oct. 25-26. There is
possibility that they might go to Afghanistan, according to diplomatic
sources.