TURKEY, ARMENIA HAVE HELD TALKS ON NORMALISING TIES: OFFICIAL
Agence France Presse — English
May 31, 2006 Wednesday 12:02 PM GMT
Diplomats from Turkey and Armenia have held exploratory talks since
last year in a bid to normalise bilateral ties poisoned by allegations
of genocide against Armenians during World War I, a Turkish foreign
ministry spokesman said Wednesday.
Three rounds of talks have been held so far between deputy
undersecretaries of the two foreign ministries “to determine whether
there is common ground on which to make progress with respect to
bilateral ties,” spokesman Namik Tan told a press conference here.
Preparations are under way for the next round of talks, he added.
Tan said Ankara is determined to pursue efforts to normalise relations,
but said Armenia too must do its part.
“Naturally, getting a result from these efforts would depend on
Armenia adopting a more flexible and constructive attitude, as well
as acting in line with international law in current bilateral and
regional problems,” Tan said.
Ankara has refused to set up diplomatic ties with Yereven since the
former Soviet republic gained independence in 1991 because of Armenian
efforts to secure international condemnation of the controversial
1915-1917 killings as genocide.
Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in
orchestrated killings during the last years of the Ottoman Empire,
the predecessor of modern Turkey.
Turkey categorically rejects the genocide label and argues that
300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife
when the Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia
and sided with Russian troops invading Ottoman soil.
In 1993, Turkey also shut its border with Armenia in a show of
solidarity with its close ally Azerbaijan, which was at war with
Armenia over the Nagorny-Karabakh enclave, dealing a heavy economic
blow on the impoverished nation.
Ankara wants Armenia to both abandon its campaign for the recognition
of the massacres as genocide, and make progress in its dispute with
Baku before formal diplomatic relations can be established.
Tan explained that the recent talks were launched after an exchange
of letters in April 2005 between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan and Armenian President Robert Kocharian.
In initiating the correspondence, Erdogan proposed the creation of a
joint commission of historians to study the genocide allegations as
a first step towards normalising ties.
Kocharian accepted the Turkish proposal in principle, but underlined
that Ankara should first unconditionally normalise relations with
Yerevan.
Ankara is under pressure from the European Union, which it is seeking
to join, to re-open its border with Armenia, and has faced mounting
calls from EU countries to address the genocide allegations.
The Armenian massacres remain one of the most sensitive periods in
Turkish history despite a burgeoning debate among Turks on the issue.
Several Western countries have recognized the killings of that period
as genocide, much to Ankara’s chagrin.