Turkey eager to have friendly ties with all neighbors

Tuesday, June 6, 2006
ANKARA - Turkish Daily News

State Minister Beşir Atalay said yesterday that the government's policy of seeking to avoid problems with neighboring countries included Armenia.

“As the government, our policy is, first of all, the elimination of all problems with our neighbors,” Atalay told the Anatolia news agency in the Romanian capital of Bucharest, where he was attending a summit aimed at fostering cooperation in the Black Sea region.

Stating that Turkey has so far settled many of its disputes with neighboring Syria and Greece within a reasonable framework, Atalay said: “There are problems with Armenia due to well-known reasons. We expect Armenia to act reasonably and wish as a neighbor to normalize our relations with Armenia.”

The border gate between the two countries has been closed for more than a decade. Turkey closed the gate and severed diplomatic relations with Armenia after Armenian troops occupied the Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Ankara now says normalization of ties depends on Armenian withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh as well as on progress in the resolution of a series of bilateral disagreements, including Armenia putting an end to its support of Armenian diaspora efforts to win international recognition for an alleged genocide of Armenians during the latter days of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey is trying to set a wedge between Armenia and its Diaspora on the Genocide issue. When is Turkey going to stop playing politics with the Armenian Genocide? This is not the sign of a neighbour that wants to be friendly! Who is Turkey kidding?

Diplomats from Turkey and Armenia have been holding exploratory talks since last year in a bid to normalize bilateral ties. Three rounds of talks have been held so far between deputy undersecretaries of the two foreign ministries “to determine whether there is common ground on which to make progress with respect to bilateral ties,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Namık Tan said last week.

“Preparations are under way for the next round of talks,” he added.

Atalay declined to elaborate on the schedule of the next round of talks with Yerevan.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.