{"id":18400,"date":"2010-04-12T21:31:45","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T19:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=18400"},"modified":"2023-04-06T15:48:23","modified_gmt":"2023-04-06T12:48:23","slug":"armenian-turkish-leaders-meet-in-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2010\/04\/12\/armenian-turkish-leaders-meet-in-washington\/","title":{"rendered":"Armenian, Turkish Leaders Meet In Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"Armenia — President Serzh Sarkisian (L) meets with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Washington, 12Apr2010<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
12.04.2010<\/div>\n

Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in Washington on Monday in an effort to kick-start the stalled process of normalizing relations between their countries. (UPDATED)<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0Neither Sarkisian, nor Erdogan made any public statements on the results of the talks. The official Turkish Anatolia news agency said they discussed in detail an unpublicized letter which Erdogan sent to the Armenian leader through a top Turkish diplomat last week. It said they two men instructed their foreign ministers to keep looking for ways of salvaging the U.S.-brokered agreements to establish diplomatic relations between Turkey and Armenia and open their land border.<\/p>\n

Addressing members of the Armenian community in the United States shortly after the talks, Sarkisian again rejected Turkish \u201cpreconditions\u201d for ratifying the two \u201cprotocols.\u201d \u201cWe are not going to make the fact of the [Armenian] Genocide the subject of an examination in any format or pretend to believe that Turkey can have any positive role in the Karabakh negotiating process,\u201d he said in a speech.<\/p>\n

Speaking to journalists on Sunday, Erdogan indicated that his government continues to link protocol ratification with a breakthrough in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process. \u201cHurriyet Daily News\u201d quoted him as saying that the U.S., Russian and French mediators co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group should be \u201cmuch more active\u201d in trying to broker a Karabakh settlement.<\/p>\n

Sarkisian was scheduled to meet Obama later in the day. That meeting was likewise expected to focus on Turkish-Armenian relations.<\/p>\n

Both the White House and official Ankara said at the weekend that Obama will hold separate talks with Erdogan on Tuesday. \u201cThe priority issue is developments regarding Armenia,\u201d the Turkish premier said before departing to the U.S.<\/p>\n

Erdogan flew to Washington just days after sending Turkey\u2019s Ambassador Namik Tan back to the United States. Tan was recalled to Ankara last month in protest against a U.S. congressional committee\u2019s approval of a draft resolution recognizing the 1915 massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide.<\/p>\n

Turkish officials say the Obama administration has assured Ankara that it will try to block further progress of the resolution. They also hope that Obama will again refrain from using the word \u201cgenocide\u201d in his April 24 statement due on the 95th anniversary of the start of the mass killings and deportations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe received some satisfactory messages [from Washington,]\u201d Tan told the Associated Press on Friday. \u201cI hope there will be a new chapter.<\/p>\n

In his speech, Sarkisian commended the influential Armenian-American community for its decades-long efforts at official U.S. recognition of the genocide. \u201cNobody can stop the inevitable,\u201d he said, signaling Yerevan\u2019s continuing support for the latest genocide bill.<\/p>\n

Sarkisian also defended the Turkish-Armenian protocols, saying that those critics who claimed they would halt the genocide recognition process have been proven wrong. He also accused Turkey of making \u201cdoomed attempts\u201d to cause a rift on the issue between Armenia and its worldwide Diaspora.<\/p>\n

Sarkisian addressed community activists at the Washington National Cathedral after laying flowers at the grave of Woodrow Wilson, America\u2019s World War One-era president revered by many Armenians. He touted Wilson as \u201ca true friend of the Armenian people\u201d and \u201cgreat statesman\u201d who was the first to articulate the need for international recognition of the Armenian genocide.<\/p>\n

Sarkisian also lauded the modern-day U.S. for its \u201cconsiderable role in the life of the Armenian people.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

https:\/\/www.azatutyun.am\/a\/2010267.html<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Armenia — President Serzh Sarkisian (L) meets with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Washington, 12Apr2010 12.04.2010 Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in Washington on Monday in an effort to kick-start the stalled process of normalizing relations between their countries. (UPDATED) \u00a0Neither Sarkisian, nor Erdogan made any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":783590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,89,34],"tags":[2129],"class_list":["post-18400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenia","category-turkey","category-usa","tag-turkey-and-armenia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18400","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=18400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}