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By Ruben Meloyan<\/span><\/p>\n A team of Turkish security officials will reportedly travel to Yerevan this weekend to discuss security measures that would be put in place in the event of President Abdullah Gul\u2019s historic visit to Armenia.<\/p>\n President Serzh Sarkisian, meanwhile, has again expressed hope that Gul will accept his invitation to arrive in the Armenian capital and watch with him the first-ever game between Armenia\u2019s and Turkey\u2019s national football teams scheduled for September 6.<\/p>\n Gul said in televised remarks late Wednesday that he is \u201cstill considering\u201d the invitation. \u201cWhat is important is whether such a visit will be useful or not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The Turkish daily \u201cZaman\u201d reported on Thursday that the Turkish president\u2019s security detail is already preparing for his possible trip and planning to send a \u201cforward unit\u201d of 15 bodyguards to Yerevan. It said they would discuss with their Armenian colleagues security measures in and around the city\u2019s Hrazdan stadium where the qualifying match for the 2010 football World Cup in South Africa will be played.<\/p>\n \u201cAccording to current plans, a group from the [Turkish] counterattack team, armed with M5 and M16 rifles, will be responsible for Gul’s security during the visit,\u201d \u201cZaman\u201d said.<\/p>\n Another leading Turkish newspaper, \u201cHurriyet,\u201d said the Foreign Ministry in Ankara is trying to arrange the security team\u2019s visit and is going to contact the Armenian government for that purpose. The paper said the Turks will either approach the Armenian embassy in Georgia or Armenia\u2019s permanent representative at the Istanbul headquarters of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation organization.<\/p>\n A diplomatic source in Yerevan told RFE\/RL that the Armenian side has not been contacted by Ankara as of late Thursday afternoon. Another Armenian source, who asked not to be identified, essentially confirmed the Turkish newspaper reports.<\/p>\n The invitation extended to Gul in June underscored a thaw in relations between the two estranged neighbors that followed Sarkisian\u2019s victory in Armenia\u2019s February 19 presidential election. The new Armenian president responded positively to Ankara\u2019s offers of a \u201cdialogue\u201d on problems hampering the normalization of Turkish-Armenian ties. Senior diplomats from the two countries held confidential talks in Switzerland in early July.<\/p>\n In an interview with the Turkish daily \u201cRadikal\u201d made public on Thursday, Sarkisian stressed the importance of what would be the first-ever trip to Armenia by a Turkish president. \u201cIf I did not believe in the visit\u2019s importance, I would not invite Mr. Gul in the first place,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are neighbors. We went through difficult times in our history. But Armenia is prepared for a development of our relations and expects the same from Turkey.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarkisian also stated that he and his Turkish counterpart \u201chave reached the decision-making phase.\u201d \u201cThose will not be easy decisions,\u201d he said. \u201cThose decisions will not be approved by the entire publics in Armenia and Turkey. But I am sure the majority of the publics will support positive decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarkisian also indicated that Yerevan and Ankara can reconcile their conflicting proposals to set up commissions discussing issues of mutual concern. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested in 2005 that the two states form a commission of historians who would look into the 1915 Armenian massacres in the Ottoman Empire and jointly determine whether they consistuted a genocide. The Armenian government turned down the offer and came up with a counter-proposal to have this and other problems hampering a Turkish-Armenian rapprochement tackled by an inter-governmental body.<\/p>\n \u201cThe best solution is the establishment of diplomatic relations,\u201d Sarkisian told \u201cRadikal.\u201d \u201cThat way we can form many subcommissions and groups within the framework of the commission to be set up by the governments.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarkisian was also asked whether the Yerevan government shares territorial claims to Turkey voiced by some Armenian political groups. \u201cI don\u2019t remember a single Armenian official speaking about territorial claims,\u201d he replied. \u201cBut I keep hearing about that from the opposite side.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf that was our official policy, then we would be called not the Republic of Armenia but the Republic of Eastern Armenia,\u201d added the Armenian president.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 By Ruben Meloyan A team of Turkish security officials will reportedly travel to Yerevan this weekend to discuss security measures that would be put in place in the event of President Abdullah Gul\u2019s historic visit to Armenia. President Serzh Sarkisian, meanwhile, has again expressed hope that Gul will accept his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":774848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenia","category-armenian-question"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3217","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=3217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}