{"id":4744,"date":"2008-09-25T20:51:52","date_gmt":"2008-09-25T17:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=4744"},"modified":"2014-01-01T20:14:52","modified_gmt":"2014-01-01T18:14:52","slug":"turkey-and-armenia-friends-and-neighbours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2008\/09\/25\/turkey-and-armenia-friends-and-neighbours\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey and Armenia – Friends and neighbours"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sep 25th 2008 | ANKARA AND YEREVAN
\nFrom The Economist<\/em> print edition<\/p>\n

Rising hopes of better relations between two historic enemies<\/strong><\/p>\n

KEMAL ATATURK, father of modern Turkey, rescued hundreds of Armenian women and children from mass slaughter <\/strong>by Ottoman forces during and after the first world war. This untold story, which is sure to surprise many of today\u2019s Turks [sic], is one of many collected by the Armenian genocide museum in Yerevan that \u201cwill soon be brought to light on our website,\u201d promises Hayk Demoyan, its director.<\/p>\n

His project is one more example of shifting relations between Turkey and Armenia. On September 6th President Abdullah Gul became the first Turkish leader to visit Armenia when he attended a football match. Mr Gul\u2019s decision to accept an invitation from Armenia\u2019s president, Serzh Sarkisian, has raised expectations that Turkey may establish diplomatic ties and open the border it closed during the 1990s fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. The two foreign ministers were planning to meet in New York this week. Armenia promises to recognise Turkey\u2019s borders and to allow a commission of historians to investigate the fate of the Ottoman Armenians.<\/p>\n

Reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia could tilt the balance of power in the Caucasus. Russia is Armenia\u2019s closest regional ally. It has two bases and around 2,000 troops there. The war in Georgia has forced Armenia to rethink its position. Some 70% of its supplies flow through Georgia, and these were disrupted by Russian bombing. Peace with Turkey would give Armenia a new outside link. Some think Russia would be happy too. \u201cIt would allow Russia to marginalise and lean harder on Georgia,\u201d argues Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the Caucasus Media Institute.<\/p>\n

Mending fences with Armenia would bolster Turkey\u2019s regional clout. And it might also help to kill a resolution proposed by the American Congress to call the slaughter of the Armenians in 1915 genocide. That makes the Armenian diaspora, which is campaigning for genocide recognition, unhappy. Some speak of a \u201cTurkish trap\u201d aimed at rewriting history to absolve Turkey of wrongdoing. Indeed, hawks in Turkey are pressing Armenia to drop all talk of genocide.<\/p>\n

Even more ambitiously, the hawks want better ties with Armenia to be tied anew to progress over Nagorno-Karabakh. But at least Mr Gul seems determined to press ahead. \u201cIf we allow the dynamics that were set in motion by the Yerevan match to slip away, we may have to wait another 15-20 years for a similar chance to arise,\u201d he has said.<\/p>\n

Source: Economist<\/span>, 25 September 2008<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sep 25th 2008 | ANKARA AND YEREVAN From The Economist print edition Rising hopes of better relations between two historic enemies KEMAL ATATURK, father of modern Turkey, rescued hundreds of Armenian women and children from mass slaughter by Ottoman forces during and after the first world war. This untold story, which is sure to surprise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":783838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[4259,694,232,204],"class_list":["post-4744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenian-question","tag-ataturk-features","tag-hayk-demoyan","tag-history-english","tag-nagorno-karabakh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4744","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=4744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}