erdogan-set-to-have-crucial-armenia-talks-in-washi ngton.html

TODAY’S ZAMAN WITH REUTERS ANKARA
10 April 2010, Saturday
Erdogan set to have crucial Armenia talks in Washington

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to meet with US
President Barack Obama during his visit to Washington next week .

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is scheduled to arrive in the US
capital on Sunday evening to take part in an international nuclear
security conference, yet moves to breathe new life into efforts by
Armenia and Turkey to bury a century of hostility and open their
common border will dominate his talks on the sidelines of the summit,
which will take place on Monday and Tuesday.

Erdogan will be accompanied by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and
Energy Minister Taner Yıldız during US President Barack Obama’s
47-country Nuclear Security Summit (NSS).

Obama, a staunch supporter of Turkish-Armenian efforts to normalize
their relations, will have bilateral talks with Armenian President
Serzh Sarksyan, while Erdogan will also have separate bilateral talks
with Sarksyan on the sidelines of the meeting. Although no exact time
or venue has been set for a meeting between Erdogan and Obama, Turkish
officials told Today’s Zaman on Friday that such a meeting was likely
to take place.

As for a trilateral meeting between Erdogan, Obama and Sarskyan, the
same officials said Ankara wants to see the outcome of a Friday visit
to the Azerbaijani capital of Baku by Foreign Ministry Undersecretary
Ambassador Feridun Sinirlioglu before attempting to schedule such a
meeting.

Armenia and Turkey signed accords in October of last year designed to
overcome the legacy of the World War I killings of Anatolian Armenians
under the Ottoman Empire. Last week, Erdogan said Turkey was returning
its ambassador to the United States, having withdrawn him a month
earlier in protest against a US congressional committee labeling the
killings as genocide.

Addressing a news conference in Ankara on Thursday, Foreign Minister
Davutoglu made no mention of the coming meeting in Washington but said
he believed the two countries would soon overcome their difficulties.
`In the following weeks, we hope to normalize Turkish-Armenian
relations by pursuing the process in the right direction and in its
own nature,’ Davutoglu said.

Under the accords, Armenia and Turkey agreed to establish diplomatic
ties and open the border within two months of parliamentary approval.
But the atmosphere has soured in the past few months, raising doubt
over when they would be ratified. Sarksyan said recently that the
Armenian Parliament would ratify the accords just after the Turkish
Parliament.

The deal would bring big economic gains to poor, landlocked Armenia.
Turkey would burnish its credentials as a potential EU entry state and
boost its clout in the South Caucasus, a region crisscrossed by
pipelines carrying oil and gas to the West.
Consultations in Baku ahead of Washington talks

The protocols face opposition from Turkey’s fellow-Muslim ally
Azerbaijan, which wants to see progress over its breakaway region of
Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan, an oil and gas exporter, lost control
over Nagorno-Karabakh when Christian ethnic Armenians backed by
Armenia broke away as the Soviet Union collapsed.

Ambassador Sinirlioglu went to Baku on Friday following his talks in
Yerevan on Wednesday. He traveled to the Armenian capital as Erdogan’s
special envoy and met with Sarksyan. Erdogan also sent a letter to
Sarksyan containing a message that an agreement would better serve the
interests of the two countries, especially when compared to the cost
of failure to achieve peace.

Following Sinirlioglu’s visit to Yerevan, the need to pay a visit to
the Azerbaijani capital emerged, diplomatic sources, speaking on
condition of anonymity, told Today’s Zaman.

In Baku, Sinirlioglu met with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar
Mammadyarov before his meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham
Aliyev. In addition to conveying his assessments of the Armenian
capital and the signals he received from the Armenian side to
Azerbaijani officials, Sinirlioglu was expected to `test the waters’
in the Azerbaijani capital ahead of the summit in Washington as Ankara
doesn’t want Baku to feel `excluded’ due to the fact that no
Azerbaijani official will be attending the summit, diplomatic sources
said. Ankara will decide whether to attempt to organize a trilateral
meeting among Armenian, US and Turkish leaders according to the
signals it receives from Baku.

The same sources highlighted that Azerbaijan was not invited to the
nuclear summit even though Armenia was invited. Although Washington
said the invitations were sent based on `certain mechanical criteria,’
Ankara conveyed its uneasiness to Washington at the highest level over
the absence of an invitation to Baku, the sources said.

In a recent interview with Reuters, Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek
once more made the government’s position on the issue clear, saying
Turkey wants Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh to pull back from the
front lines. It also wants Armenia to correct a ruling by its
constitutional court, which in January had endorsed the protocols but
added that the state had a duty to pursue the international
recognition of the killings of Armenians in 1915 as genocide.