{"id":14941,"date":"2009-09-25T20:54:33","date_gmt":"2009-09-25T18:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=14941"},"modified":"2023-04-06T15:42:13","modified_gmt":"2023-04-06T12:42:13","slug":"erdogan-hopes-sarkisian-will-visit-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2009\/09\/25\/erdogan-hopes-sarkisian-will-visit-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"Erdogan Hopes Sarkisian Will Visit Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/gdb.rferl.org\/E4C90BCF-AC7D-4D60-94C1-691A16D63AE9_w393_s.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/>U.S. &#8212; Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan attends the United Nations Security Council meeting during the UN General Assembly at UN Headquarters in New York, 24Sep2009<\/div>\n<div>25.09.2009<\/div>\n<p><span>Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has expressed hope that President Serzh Sarkisian will pay a landmark visit to Turkey next month and said Ankara\u2019s fence-mending agreements with Yerevan could be submitted to the Turkish parliament for ratification before that.<\/span><\/p>\n<div>Sarkisian has been invited by his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gul, to watch with him the return match of the two countries\u2019 national football teams in the Turkish city of Bursa on October 14. The two presidents\u2019 presence at their first World Cup qualifying played in Yerevan in September last year gave new impetus to the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf the Turkish president can easily go to Armenia to watch a game, then it should be just as easy and simple for the Armenian president [to visit Turkey,]\u201d Turkish media on Thursday quoted Erdogan as saying in a speech at Princeton University in the United States said. \u201cI think asking for certain conditions to be met to decide to come is not the right way forward in international politics anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sarkisian has repeatedly stated that he will accept Gul\u2019s invitation only if Turkey takes \u201creal steps\u201d to establish diplomatic relations and open its border with Armenia. The August 31 publication of two relevant draft protocols finalized by Ankara and Yerevan is thought to have made his visit much more likely.<\/p>\n<p>The trip would come just days after the anticipated signing of the Turkish-Armenian protocols, most probably in a third country. Various Turkish sources said last week that the signing ceremony has been tentatively scheduled for October 11-13.<\/p>\n<p>But Erdogan implied in his speech that the two sides could put pen to paper on the Western-backed deal even before that. \u201cIf we don&#8217;t see prejudice or some domestic political considerations at play, I believe the preparation for the agreement, which has been initialed between Turkey and Armenia, could be taken to Parliament to be ratified,\u201d he said, according to \u201cToday\u2019s Zaman\u201d newspaper. \u201cWe hope to take those steps by the 10th or 11th of next month.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Erdogan did not specify whether his government will seek to push the documents through Turkey\u2019s Grand National Assembly, in which his ruling Justice and Development Party has a majority, if Armenia and Azerbaijan fail to achieve a breakthrough in their peace talks on Nagorno-Karabakh. Sarkisian and Azerbaijan\u2019s President Ilham Aliyev are expected to a potentially decisive meeting on October 6.<\/p>\n<p>The Turkish premier reportedly said late last week that the Turkish-Armenian frontier will not be reopened until \u201cAzerbaijan\u2019s occupied territories are returned.\u201d Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian swiftly criticized the remark, saying that it contradicts \u201cthe letter, spirit and aims\u201d of the Turkish-Armenian agreements.<\/p><\/div>\n<div>https:\/\/www.azatutyun.am\/a\/1836254.html<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. &#8212; Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan attends the United Nations Security Council meeting during the UN General Assembly at UN Headquarters in New York, 24Sep2009 25.09.2009 Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has expressed hope that President Serzh Sarkisian will pay a landmark visit to Turkey next month and said Ankara\u2019s fence-mending agreements with Yerevan [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":783683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,89],"tags":[2129],"class_list":["post-14941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenia","category-turkey","tag-turkey-and-armenia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}