Agence France Presse
October 15, 2009 Thursday 4:43 PM GMT

Turkish police foil model plane protest at Armenia match

ANKARA, Oct 15 2009

Police held four people accused of planning to fly a model plane with
Azerbaijani flags in a stadium hosting a politically charged football match
between Turkey and Armenia, Anatolia news agency said Thursday.

Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian watched Wednesday’s game together with
his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul, on a historic visit to Turkey aimed at
cementing efforts to normalise ties between their two countries.

Sahabettin Harput, the governor of the northwestern city of Bursa where the
match took place, said the suspects were detained a day before the World Cup
qualifying match, along with a remote-control model plane with a wingspan of
150 centimeters (60 inches).

"The suspects planned to tie Azerbaijani flags to the plane and then fly it
inside the stadium," Harput was quoted by Anatolia as saying.

The governor had earlier said the suspects wanted to land a glider on the
pitch, but later explained that this had been a "misunderstanding" since one
of the suspects had attended a glider course.

Turkey and Armenia, long divided by a bloody history, signed two historic
deals last week to end decades of hostility, establish formal ties and open
their border.

For many Turks, the peace efforts amount to selling out Azerbaijan, one of
Ankara’s closest allies, whose conflict with Yerevan over the disputed
Nagorny Karabakh region led Turkey in 1993 to seal its border with Armenia.

The two nations have been estranged since World War I when, Armenians say,
1.5 million of their kin were killed by their Turkish Ottoman rulers in a
genocide, a label Turkey fiercely rejects.

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