On a visit to Washington this week, Ahmet Davuto\u011flu, described as the architect of the Turkish government’s foreign policy in the\u00a0last five years, sought to warn the campaign of the Democratic Party\u00a0presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D.-Ill.) against changing U.S. policy\u00a0on the Armenian Genocide, while reiterating Turkey’s desire to improve relations\u00a0with Armenia and Armenian-Americans.
\nIn remarks at a Brookings\u00a0Institution event on October 28, Mr. Davuto?lu insisted that Turkey wants “to
\nhave best relations with Armenia,” and “good relations” with Armenians\u00a0everywhere in the diaspora, and that he and his government “don’t see Armenia as\u00a0a threat; we don’t see Armenians as enemies.”<\/p>\n
Responding to a question\u00a0from the Armenian Reporter, he said President Abdullah Gul’s visit to Yerevan in
\nearly September was “done with the purpose of improving our relations with\u00a0Armenians, not as a response to the Georgian crisis [and] was not a visit of\u00a0realpolitik.”<\/p>\n
The “decision to visit Yerevan was clear immediately\u00a0after [the invitation from President Serge Sargsian] was received [in July] but\u00a0of course it was not publicized,” he said.<\/p>\n
At the Brookings event,\u00a0Alan Makovsky, a senior Democratic staff member for the House Foreign
\nAffairs Committee, appeared to take to heart Azerbaijan’s “nervousness” over\u00a0Armenian-Turkish talks and wondered what Turkey’s “red lines” were with regard\u00a0to Karabakh.<\/p>\n
Mr. Davutoglu’s comments suggested that unlike its\u00a0unchanged position on the Armenian Genocide, the Turkish government may be\u00a0considering dropping or modifying its preconditions related to the Karabakh
\nconflict.<\/p>\n
While reiterating that Turkey has close ties with Azerbaijan,\u00a0and arguing that the Karabakh conflict should be resolved sooner rather than\u00a0later, Mr. Davutoglu declined to link such a resolution directly to\u00a0Armenian-Turkish talks focused on establishing diplomatic relations and opening\u00a0the border.<\/p>\n
Ambassador Davuto?lu, who is the chief foreign\u00a0policy advisor to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, was dispatched to U.S.,\u00a0as the Turkish Hurriyet daily put it, to “warn the future U.S. administration
\nagainst endorsing Armenian claims of genocide at the hands of the Ottoman\u00a0Empire.”<\/p>\n
“A step in the wrong direction will pose a risk not\u00a0only to the Turkish-American strategic cooperation but also to Turkey’s efforts\u00a0to reach out to Armenia,” Mr. Davuto?lu was quoted as saying after talks with
\nBush Administration officials and Republican and Democratic campaign\u00a0advisors.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, speaking at the Jamestown Foundation on October 29,\u00a0Graham Fuller, a veteran Turkey expert for the RAND Corporation, stressed that\u00a0considering the long list of differences between the two countries – especially\u00a0on Iran and Russia – Turkey “is no longer a U.S.\u00a0ally.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senior Turkish official: “Armenians aren’t our enemies” On a visit to Washington this week, Ahmet Davuto\u011flu, described as the architect of the Turkish government’s foreign policy in the\u00a0last five years, sought to warn the campaign of the Democratic Party\u00a0presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D.-Ill.) against changing U.S. policy\u00a0on the Armenian Genocide, while reiterating Turkey’s desire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":52500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenian-question"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6643","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=6643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}