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Turkish president on historic trip to Armenia for football diplomacy

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  • Turkish president on historic trip to Armenia for football diplomacy

    Agence France Presse
    Sept 6 2008


    Turkish president on historic trip to Armenia for football diplomacy


    YEREVAN (AFP) ' Turkey's President Abdullah Gul makes an historic trip
    to Armenia Saturday to watch a football match and try to tackle
    decades of animosity between the estranged neighbours.

    Gul will meet with Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian before the World
    Cup qualifier between Armenia and Turkey that is scheduled to begin at
    9:00 pm (1600 GMT).

    Under attack from the opposition at home, Gul only publicly accepted
    Sarkisian's invitation this week to attend the match and become the
    first Turkish head of state to visit Armenia.

    The two countries have no diplomatic relations and have waged a bitter
    international diplomatic battle over Armenia's attempts to have
    massacres of their people under the Ottoman Empire classified as
    genocide.

    Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their people were killed in
    orchestrated massacres during World War I as the Ottoman Empire fell
    apart.

    Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that 300,000-500,000
    Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when
    Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided
    with invading Russian troops.

    The trip will only last a few hours, but Gul and Sarkisian are
    expected to hold talks on Turkey's proposal for a Caucasus regional
    security forum, trying to avoid contentious bilateral problems,
    according to diplomatic sources.

    Experts in both countries have stressed that this is just a cautious
    first step.

    "The Turkish president's visit to Armenia is of huge importance," said
    Yerevan-based political analyst Sergei Shakariants.

    "But it is impossible to expect that a first meeting will be enough to
    resolve problems that have endured for centuries. This meeting is a
    simple first contact," he said.

    "Gul's visit is a bold move, but one should not expect much from it,"
    said Cengiz Aktar, an international affairs expert at Istanbul's
    Bahcesehir University.

    "First of all, there is no a real desire in Turkey to make peace with
    Armenia and the atmosphere is not suitable for ground-breaking moves."

    The Turkish government has adopted a cautious tone.

    "The facts that we have do not support the theory that the visit will
    resolve all the problems, but it is not right to assume that nothing
    will come of it either," State Minister Mehmet Aydin was quoted by the
    Anatolia news agency as saying.

    Some Turkish fans began to arrive Friday for the match, including
    student Pinar Akpinar, a member of the "Young Civilians," a
    pro-democracy movement that called for Turkey's closed border with
    Armenia to be reopened for the match.

    "The invitation by the Armenian president to Mr Gul is a very positive
    development. We want to have normal relations with our neighbours,"
    Akpinar said. "We think that we can overcome this question, that the
    two people can together find a solution.... The people of the two
    countries must assume their responsibilities and work together to put
    an end to this animosity."

    Turkey has refused to establish diplomatic ties with Armenia since the
    former Soviet republic gained independence in 1991.

    In 1993 Turkey also shut its border with Armenia in a show of
    solidarity with its close ally Azerbaijan, then at war with Armenia
    over Nagorny Karabakh, an Armenian-majority region in Azerbaijan which
    declared independence.

    The move dealt a heavy blow to Armenia, an impoverished nation
    sandwiched between Turkey and Azerbaijan in the strategic Caucasus.
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