PROMINENT ARMENIANS DENOUNCE PM’S WORDS

Hurriyet Daily News
July 28, 2011
Turkey

Ankara’s close relationship with Baku is partly to blame for the
Turkish PM’s angry response to Armenian president’s earlier comments
on East Anatolia, according to prominent Armenian figures who have
denounced the retort as Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh
Kocharyan said that the Turkish anger against Sarkisian’s remarks
was as much the product of imagination as it was insincere.

“Turkey says [they] want peace and tranquility in the Caucasus on one
hand while they are trying to prepare Azerbaijan for a new war on the
other,” David Shahnazarian, a leading opposition figure and the former
national security minister, told the Hurriyet Daily News by telephone
Thursday. “Azerbaijan has a hysterical attitude whenever there is
talk of Turkey-Armenia relations,” Hayk Khanumyan, head of the a
nongovernmental organization in Nagorno-Karabakh, told the Daily News.