Turkish president to stage historic visit to Armenia

[bemildred]

Source: AFP

ANKARA (AFP) — President Abdullah Gul will on Saturday become the first Turkish head of state to visit Armenia, his office said, fuelling hopes of easing almost a century of hostility over massacres by Turkish Ottoman empire forces.

Gul will go to Yerevan to attend a football match between the two countries, which do not have diplomatic relations and have spent decades at loggerheads over Armenia's attempts to get the massacres classified as "genocide."

Armenia's President Serge Sarkisian invited Gul last month to attend the qualifying match for the 2010 World Cup finals. Turkish diplomats and security officials have been in Yerevan this week making final preparations.

"A visit around this match can create a new climate of friendship in the region," the Turkish presidency said in a statement posted on its website. "It's with this in mind that the president has accepted the invitation.

Read more: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hgFIzXU-YTlNB2NYgrjOqhO8Lcfw

[angstlessk]

1. wow, they are healing old wounds as boosh* attempts with all his might

to open the old ones with Russia...god help us and may Obama be our next president of the us of a!

[Karenina]

2. Will Darth still be next door?

Hmmm...

[Ghost Dog]

3. That relates to this (shame on AFP for not spelling it out):

(25 August 2008, Monday, TODAY'S ZAMAN ANKARA)... Erdoğan first touched upon his government's initiative for building a Caucasia Stability and Cooperation Platform, which would include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia and Turkey. His proposal for the platform came after a regional crisis erupted following a Georgian military offensive in its Russian-backed breakaway region of South Ossetia earlier this month. In the first half of August, Erdoğan paid successive visits to Moscow and Tbilisi and last week traveled to Baku to promote and garner support for the proposed platform. Both Georgian and Russian leaders said they would welcome the idea, while a joint statement released by Erdoğan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said Baku had approached the proposal "positively." In an initial reaction to the Turkish plans to involve Armenia in the Caucasus talks, Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said Yerevan welcomed the Turkish initiative.

Turkey wants hardship to end in the Caucasus and wants this region to be a zone of peace and wellbeing, Erdoğan said, adding that Georgia is a close neighbor of Turkey.

"Our voice is heard when we scream. We cannot remain silent about a place to which we are so close. That's why we will try our best," Erdoğan was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.

"Now, the main opposition has started talking again. Not because it knows so much. The ships passing through the straits, the necessary things required by the Montreux Convention are being done," Erdoğan said, in remarks targeting both the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and the media, Anatolia reported.

As of Friday, the CHP, which views government efforts to create a Caucasus regional platform to resolve regional crises with suspicion, formally requested a statement on whether the US ships transiting the Turkish Straits met Montreux standards. The CHP's Onur Öymen issued a formal inquiry to Foreign Minister Ali Babacan over whether the United States complied with Montreux requirements that all warship transits have to be declared to Turkish authorities eight days in advance.

/... http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=151114