TURKEY SENDS ENVOY TO ARMENIA FOR HIGH-LEVEL TALKS

Hurriyet
April 7 2010
Turkey

Feridun Sinirlioglu, undersecretary of the Turkish Foreign Ministry,
will meet with Armenian President Serge Sarkisian, pictured above. AFP
photo

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sent Turkey’s top diplomat
to Armenia to discuss snags in reconciliation efforts between the
two estranged neighbors, Turkish officials said Wednesday.

Feridun Sinirlioglu, undersecretary of the foreign ministry, was to
meet Wednesday with Armenian President Serge Sarkisian and Foreign
Minister Edward Nalbandian, a Foreign Ministry source said.

He was to discuss disagreements holding up a historic deal that Turkey
and Armenia signed in October in a bid to end decades of hostility,
establish diplomatic ties and open their border.

Sinirlioglu "will reassert Turkey’s commitment to the [reconciliation]
process but will also convey our concerns," the official, who requested
anonymity, told AFP.

The envoy will also discuss "steps that need to be taken to ensure
that the process moves forward," said a senior diplomat, who also
declined to be named.

He will also explore the possibility of arranging a meeting between
Erdogan and Sarkisian on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit
in Washington next week, the sources said.

The Turkish-Armenian deal — comprising two protocols — needs
parliamentary ratification in both countries to take effect, but the
process has been held up by mutual accusations that the other side
is not truly committed to the terms of the agreement.

Ankara is irked by a January ruling of Armenia’s constitutional court
that upheld the legality of the protocols but said they could not
contradict Yerevan’s official position that the mass killings of
Armenians under the Ottoman Empire was genocide — a label Turkey
fiercely rejects.

Yerevan, for his part, has protested Ankara’s position that the Turkish
Parliament is unlikely to ratify the accord without progress in the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, a close
Turkish ally.

The peace process has been marred also by resolutions adopted last
month by a U.S. House of Representatives committee and the Swedish
parliament that branded the World War I massacres of Armenians as
genocide, infuriating Ankara.