GUL TELLS ARMENIA TO SOLVE ITS PROBLEMS WITH AZERBAIJAN
EmÝne Kart Ýstanbul
Today’s Zaman, Turkey
June 26 2007
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Armenia should work to resolve
its territorial disputes with neighboring Azerbaijan, suggesting that
this would help the landlocked country to resolve its problems with
Turkey, too.
Gul made the suggestion at a rare meeting with Vartan Oskanian,
the Armenian foreign minister, on the sidelines of a meeting of
the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) in Istanbul. Neighbors
Turkey and Armenia have no formal ties due to disputes over Yerevan’s
support for Armenian diaspora efforts worldwide to win international
recognition for an alleged genocide of Armenians at the hands of
the Ottoman Empire as well as due to the continuing occupation of
Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan, by Armenian
forces. Turkey also refuses to open its border gate with Armenia,
closed following Armenian occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh in the past
decade, unless there is an improvement in Armenia’s stance.
Oskanian said at the closed-door meeting with Gul that Armenia wanted
to improve ties with Turkey and stressed that the reopening of the
border would help mend fences, a Turkish diplomat close to the talks
said. Gul, however, responded that Armenia should work to resolve
the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.
"We also expect some gestures from you," the diplomat quoted Gul
as saying, in reference to a Turkish proposal to set up a joint
committee of Turkish and Armenian academics to study the genocide
allegations. At a press conference following his talks with Gul,
Oskanian expressed disappointment at the lack of progress.
He said unlike leaders of the rest of other member countries of BSEC,
Armenian President Robert Kocharian declined to come to Ýstanbul to
attend the 12-nation organization’s 15th anniversary summit because
there were no diplomatic relations between Turkey and Armenia.
He noted that Kocharian had come to Turkey when he first came to
power in 1998, to attend a meeting of the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) because he then had high hopes for
peace and progress. "Unfortunately there has been no change since
then," he told the conference.
Oskanian reiterated that Armenia had no precondition for improvement of
relations with Turkey but complained that Turkey had clear conditions
to take any step in this direction. The Armenian foreign minister
criticized Turkish conditions to open the border gate and claimed
that they were not "justifiable."
Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen died in a systematic
genocide campaign during World War I, but Ankara categorically rejects
the label, saying that both Armenians and Turks died in civil strife
during World War I when the Armenians took up arms for independence in
eastern Anatolia and sided with Russian troops invading the crumbling
Ottoman Empire.
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