“This is only a football game, it is not a war. We cannot carry the weight of history on our shoulders.”

Fatih Terim was right and wrong about Turkey’s World Cup qualifier against Armenia back in 2008.

Yes, it was only a football game. But it also wasn’t only a football game.

It was the first time these neighbouring nations had come face to face since Armenia gained independence in 1991, a rivalry with a huge disparity between its ferocity and the number of games they had actually played against each other.

Because the rivalry isn’t really about football. It’s about a geopolitical and historical schism that stretches back over a century, and the refusal of Turkey to acknowledge the perpetration of a genocide against the Armenian people that predates the formation of either country. The 193-mile (311km) land border between the two countries is closed. For most of the last three decades, diplomatic relations have simply not existed.

Slightly heavier than most derbies, then.

Tonight, the two countries will face each other again, having been paired in Group D of the Euro 2024 qualifiers. None of the diplomatic issues have been solved, although there is tentative optimism that some sort of accord could be close.

This isn’t only a football game.

The bare facts of those 2010 World Cup qualifiers are that Turkey won both games 2-0.

But their wider significance was far greater. The hope was that they would act as the catalyst to normalise relations, an opportunity for friendly hands to reach across the divide.

“It was literally based on football diplomacy,” says Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center, a think tank based in Yerevan, the Armenian capital, and who has also been involved in diplomatic negotiations between the two countries.

“The then Turkish president, Abdullah Gul, was invited (to the game in Armenia). Then it was reciprocated, with the Armenian president, Serzh Sargsyan, going to Turkey. This was the ice-breaker. Football as a neutral, shared passion.”

Before the second game, a tentative agreement was signed, laying out a roadmap for the restoration of proper relations between the two countries. “We are going to resolve the issues and not pass them on to the next generations,” Sargsyan said at the time.

Alas, that goodwill didn’t last: the agreement broke down after neither side was able to ratify it, and it was back to square one.

https://theathletic.com/4341316/2023/03/25/armenia-turkey-euro-2024-genocide/