SOCCER DIPLOMACY MAY SPEED TURKISH-ARMENIAN THAW

Panorama.am
14:41 12/10/2009

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan may not mind if Turkey’s soccer
team thrashes Armenia this week. He has his sights set on a higher
goal – ending a century-old dispute between the two neighbors,
Bloomberg reported.

Sargsyan is due to attend the Oct. 14 World Cup qualifier in Bursa,
northwest Turkey, the first visit by an Armenian leader in a decade,
as a guest of his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul. A year ago,
Gul broke new ground by watching the last match between the sides in
Armenia in a move dubbed as "soccer diplomacy" by the press.

The visit comes four days after the two countries agreed a road-map
for establishing diplomatic ties, which Turkey hopes will assuage
European Union opponents of Turkish membership. Armenia hopes it will
raise living standards. Politicians from both sides face opposition
though, as Armenians demand that Turkey recognize the massacre of
their compatriots in 1915 as genocide.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who helped mediate a
last-minute hitch at the road-map signing ceremony in Zurich on
Oct. 10, said ratification is "going to be difficult but that’s the
next step," Clinton told reporters after the signing..

Successive U.S. presidents including Barack Obama have pledged to
recognize the Armenian genocide, straining relations with NATO member
Turkey, though they haven’t fulfilled the promises.

Obama has backed the current negotiations and told the Turkish
parliament during a visit in April that "an open border would
return the Turkish and Armenian people to a peaceful and prosperous
coexistence."

Turkey can point to the Armenian accord to bolster its EU application
and also improve ties with the U.S., said Wolfango Piccoli, a
London-based analyst at the Eurasia Group, which measures political
risk in emerging markets.

The opening of the border may be delayed as Turkey seeks progress
in talks over Armenia’s occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave
within Azerbaijan, said Piccoli.

The sport has served a diplomatic purpose in the past. Iranian
and U.S. players exchanged flowers before a 1998 World Cup
match, symbolizing a political thaw under then-President Mohammad
Khatami. Co-hosting the 2002 tournament helped ease historic tensions
between Japan and South Korea.

In 1969, though, Honduras and El Salvador went to war days after
a World Cup qualifier in which Salvadoran authorities burned the
Honduran flag during pre-match ceremonies and ran a used dishcloth
up the flagpole instead.