Turkish Daily News

The Presidential Palace will make a statement soon and answer the “Will President Abdullah Gül travel to Armenia and watch the World Cup qualifying match between the Turkish and Armenian national teams?” question that has been waiting for an answer ever since Armenian President Serge Sarkisian extended an invitation to him some four weeks ago to watch the game together.

Gül has reportedly decided to make a one-day trip to Armenia on Sept. 6 after the Turkish Foreign Ministry presented him last week with an evaluation report asserting that while there were some security concerns, turning down the invitation could give a wrong image to the world that Turkey did not have a peaceful approach towards Armenia and thus would hurt Turkey’s interests. On the other hand, the Foreign Ministry evaluation paper reportedly asserted that in view of the increased tensions in the region after Georgian developments, the visit might contribute to the promotion of Turkey’s proposal for the creation of a Caucasus Platform and thus strengthen chances of “containing” the problem within the region. Furthermore, the evaluation note reportedly underlined that a visit to Armenia by President Gül would not hurt Azerbaijani interests either as the visit could not be exploited by Yerevan to legitimize the continued occupation of Azerbaijani territory, but on the contrary by demonstrating Turkey’s goodwill towards Armenia, may help increase prospects of a resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nogorno-Karabagh. Also, in the political corridors of Ankara there are claims that Armenian and Azerbaijani negotiators have achieved some serious headway in their talks and that a resolution might have finally become discernible.

Still, President Gül reportedly pondered until the last minute whether an “unofficial and totally social visit” by himself to Yerevan to watch the soccer game might result in Armenia developing some “great expectations” of Turkey taking some unilateral goodwill moves without Yerevan making reciprocal moves. Another concern was reportedly whether the people of Azerbaijan would misunderstand such a trip by the Turkish president as a sign of letup in Turkey’s determined and heartfelt unwavering support for Baku in all fields.

If a last minute development does not change the plans of the president to travel to Armenia, an official statement on Gül’s visit is expected to be made early this week – just sufficiently before the July 6 game of the two national teams – after Yerevan was formally notified that the decision of the president to accept the invitation had been extended.

In the mean time, a Foreign Ministry delegation and a security team composed of some top presidential security personnel will be travelling to Yerevan as early as today to prepare for the first-ever but yet “unofficial” trip by the Turkish president. In another development, Armenia has temporarily lifted visa requirements for Turkish nationals wishing to travel to Yerevan to watch this first-ever match between the two national teams.

A good step, but…:

Though concerns persist in Ankara that as demonstrated by the latest remarks made by the Armenian president, Yerevan is still unable to understand that Turkey would retaliate in kind if it undertook some steps in goodwill towards Ankara, the visit may help “engaging” Armenia into some sort of an unconditional dialogue for the normalization of relations as the policy of “isolation” that has been in force since 1993 so far could not produce any tangible result.

Still, normalization of relations will continue to be a distant dream as long as Armenia realizes that it is absurd to remain buried in the “We cannot discuss or let historians discuss whether genocide ever occurred because such a move would mean we have doubts on the issue” obsession on the one hand while on the other hand assuming that Turkey can abandon Azerbaijani Turks and develop relations with Yerevan to a full normalized level while Azerbaijani territory remains under Armenian occupation and some 1.8 million Azerbaijanis are living in refugee tents or train cars.

Not only Armenia, but Turkey and Azerbaijan will benefit as well from a normalization of relations, while the removal of one of the intractable problems on the Caucasus map would be a great contribution to global peace and stability, dangerously challenged today with the Russian actions on Georgian territory.

Thus, Gül travelling to Yerevan and watching the game between the two national teams with his Armenian counterpart will be a good gesture which will be doomed to stay as such as long as Armenia don’t realize that it should take some serious steps to demonstrate its will for better ties…

Source: www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=114117