{"id":862,"date":"2008-07-23T23:03:22","date_gmt":"2008-07-23T20:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=862"},"modified":"2023-04-02T12:50:56","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T09:50:56","slug":"dashnaks-leader-uneasy-over-armenian-overtures-to-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2008\/07\/23\/dashnaks-leader-uneasy-over-armenian-overtures-to-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"Dashnaks Leader Uneasy Over Armenian Overtures To Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/span>
Rustamian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Anna Saghabalian<\/span><\/p>\n

A leader of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) reiterated on Wednesday his party\u2019s misgivings and unease about President Serzh Sarkisian\u2019s diplomatic overtures to Turkey.<\/p>\n

Armen Rustamian warned that Turkish President Abdullah Gul will face street protests by Dashnaktsutyun if he accepts Sarkisian\u2019s invitation to visit Yerevan and watch the first-ever match between the two countries\u2019 national soccer teams to be played on September 6.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must not allow Turkey to create an illusion about the existence of relations [with Armenia,]\u201d he told journalists. \u201cThis is all it wants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rustamian said Dashnaktsutyun, which is a junior partner in Armenia\u2019s governing coalition, would \u201cremind\u201d Gul of the 1915 Armenian genocide and other problems existing between the two nations. \u201cWe have the right to express our protest within the civilized norms,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are currently thinking about what forms it could take.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Armenian and Turkish governments raised new hopes for the normalization of the historically strained relations between their nations shortly after Sarkisian took over as Armenia\u2019s new president in April. Official Yerevan responded positively to Ankara\u2019s offer of a \u201cdialogue.\u201d As well as inviting Gul to pay a first-ever visit to Armenia by a Turkish head of state, Sarkisian signaled last month his government\u2019s readiness to agree, in principle, to the creation of a Turkish-Armenian commission of historians that would study the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.<\/p>\n

Sarkisian\u2019s predecessor, Robert Kocharian, rejected the idea floated by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2005, saying that the highly sensitive issue must be addressed by the two governments, rather than historians. In an interview late last month, Kocharian faulted Sarkisian for extending the extraordinary invitation to Gul welcomed by the United States.<\/p>\n

Rustamian agreed with Kocharian\u2019s stance, while playing down the significance of the invitation. \u201cIf I were the president I wouldn\u2019t invite him,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rustamian, who also chairs the Armenian parliament\u2019s foreign relations committee, insisted at the same time that there are no \u201cstrategic differences\u201d within Armenia\u2019s leadership on how to improve relations with Turkey.<\/p>\n

Successive Armenian governments have stood for an unconditional normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations, saying that the two countries should establish diplomatic relations and open their border before tackling their outstanding problems. Dashnaktsutyun has traditionally favored a harder line that makes Turkish recognition of the genocide a necessary condition for a Turkish-Armenian rapprochement.<\/p>\n

(Photolur photo: Armen Rustamian.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wednesday 23, July 2008<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Anna Saghabalian A leader of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) reiterated on Wednesday his party\u2019s misgivings and unease about President Serzh Sarkisian\u2019s diplomatic overtures to Turkey. Armen Rustamian warned that Turkish President Abdullah Gul will face street protests by Dashnaktsutyun if he accepts Sarkisian\u2019s invitation to visit Yerevan and watch the first-ever match between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":774847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-862","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\/862","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=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}