DAVUTOGLU MEETS AZERBAIJANI LEADERS AFTER FLAG TENSION
Today’s Zaman
Oct 23 2009
Turkey
Ahmet Davutoglu (L) met with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on
Thursday in Baku.
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had talks on Thursday in Baku
with both Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his Azerbaijani
counterpart, Elmar Mammadyarov, due to tensions between the regional
allies, which escalated upon the delivery of a diplomatic note of
protest to Azerbaijani officials because of their decision to remove
a Turkish flag in front of an embassy building in Baku.
The occasion of Davutoglu’s visit to Baku was a foreign ministerial
meeting of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation
(BSEC) hosted by Azerbaijan. There was a positive environment during
the one-hour meeting between Davutoglu and Mammadyarov, diplomatic
sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Anatolia news
agency, as they noted that all issues between the two countries have
dealt with "a broad perspective."
Protocols signed between Armenia and Turkey for re-establishing their
ties and reopening their joint border, the removal of Turkish flags
around a monument to 1,130 Turkish soldiers who died while fighting for
Azerbaijan’s independence in 1918 and recent developments regarding
efforts by the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has been working for a decade
and a half to mediate the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute between Armenia
and Azerbaijan, were discussed during the meeting between the two
foreign ministers, the same diplomatic sources told Anatolia.
The meetings between Davutoglu and Azerbaijani leaders "passed in the
way they should pass between officials of the two brotherly countries,"
the sources said, without elaborating.
Meanwhile, Anatolia also reported that Ambassador Unal Ceviköz, the
deputy undersecretary for the Caucasus and Central Asia, is in Vienna
attending a meeting of the Minsk Group that will be held today. As of
Thursday, Ceviköz had already started talks with his counterparts,
the agency said, without providing further detail.
Earlier this week, Ankara protested Azerbaijan’s removal of Turkish
flags at a cemetery and outside some Turkish missions in apparent
retaliation to a ban that prevented Turkish fans from waving Azeri
flags during a World Cup qualifying match between Turkey and Armenia
earlier this month.