TURKEY IS READY TO OPEN BORDER AFTER LIBERATION OF OCCUPIED REGION OF AZERBAIJAN

13 February 2015 – 1:07pm

Turkey is ready to open its border with Armenia in return for Yerevan
ceding from at least one occupied region of Azerbaijan, Turkish Prime
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said at a meeting with representatives of
national minorities.

Armenians who live in Turkey are a part of the country as well, and
relations between Ankara and Yerevan should not adversely affect them,
he said.

According to Davutoglu, Turkey intends to work to resolve the
difficulties in relations with Armenia, Trend reports.

This proposal was perceived negatively in Armenia. The deputy director
of the Caucasus Institute, Sergey Minasyan, told Vestnik Kavkaza that
the current Armenian leadership will never agree to such a deal.

“These conditions are absolutely unacceptable. Such proposals were
repeatedly voiced by the Turkish side, and before they had not spoken
about “at least one area”, but about “at least one village”. It is
clear that there will be no positive response to it,” Minasyan said.

He noted that Armenia is currently divided into two camps on the
issue of opening the border with Turkey. “There is a mood in Armenian
society that Armenia does not need an open border with Turkey as
long as Turkey does not recognize the 1915 events as genocide of
Armenians and will not make any other overtures to Yerevan. There
are other moods in Armenian society, but the most prevalent is the
first option,” the deputy director of the Caucasus Institute said.

Meanwhile, the political scientist Togrul Ismail drew attention to
the fact that in this way Turkey wants to show its willingness to
improve relations with Armenia.”But for that, Armenia should abandon
its aggressive foreign policy, to go to the peace talks, at least
partially withdraw from the occupied territories. In other words,
Turkey has made a political gesture to Armenia and it is waiting for a
similar gesture from the Armenian side. Initially in 1993 the borders
were closed in protest against the occupation by Armenian military
units of the territory of the Kelbajar district, and it is necessary
to open them, whatever progress has been made in the peace settlement.

Turkey must see a concrete result in this case first,” he explained.

“Alas, there is no result yet. The Armenian side constantly demands
negotiations without preconditions, but Armenia has made such a
thing, that the conditions we are talking about are not advanced,
but are just normal for dialogue. It should withdraw from the occupied
territories, move away from an aggressive foreign policy, to drop the
charges against neighbors of various genocidal events. To behave like
a normal country, improving relations with its neighbors. And now we
have a sort of whim of the state against all its neighbors: Armenia
has territorial claims on Turkey and Azerbaijan and Georgia. This
is not serious and does not meet current international standards,”
Togrul Ismail concluded.