Category: Main Issues

ARMENIA-TURKEY student exchange programs yolda

Mustafa Oğuz
Discovering a culture to dissipate prejudices
ANKARA – In a survey carried out to determine the attitudes
of university students toward Armenians, it is found that for 44
percent of 3,095 students surveyed the word ‘Armenian’ has negative
connotations. However, the majority would prefer opportunities to
interact more with them

A comprehensive survey on Turkish university students’ perception of
Armenians has revealed that while a majority harbor mainly negative
feelings toward Armenians, they would welcome an opportunity for
greater interaction with them.

“Prejudices
against Armenians exist also at the university students’ level. We
wanted to pinpoint the reasons by surveying 3,095 students,” said Evrim
Tan, founder of Turkish University Students’ Perspective, or TÜÖY, the
student group that carried out the poll, speaking to the Hürriyet Daily
News & Economic Review.

The word “Armenian” had negative
connotations for 44 percent of respondents. Moreover, 35 percent
preferred to not have an Armenian employer, and almost half of students
did not want an Armenian spouse. The political appearance of Armenians
was even more problematic, as 54 percent of students said they would
not vote for a deputy candidate of Armenian origin and 50 percent said
they would not want Armenians to have their own publications.

No common ground
“We
think a major reason is the lack of contact with the Armenian culture,”
Tan said. Despite hundreds of years of co-existence in the Ottoman era,
now only 33 percent of students suggested that there were common
grounds and proximity between Turkish and Armenian cultures.
Contemporary relations are also in a poor stance. Almost 70 percent had
never heard the Armenian language being spoken, and only 24 percent
said they would welcome an institute for the Armenian language.

“Despite
the large number of negative answers regarding Armenians, many
interviewees expressed that more studies of a similar type should be
carried out,” said Mühtan Sağlam, a senior at TOBB and a writer of the
survey. The percent of students who would like to participate in joint
social activities with Armenian university students was 42, while 38
said they would not want to take part in such activities.

TÜÖY
found a chance to share the results of the survey with its Armenian
counterparts in Yerevan, during the Armenia-Turkey nongovernmental
organizations meeting in March prepared by the Civil Society
Development Centre in Turkey in collaboration with Civil Society
Institute in Armenia. “Armenian NGO representatives told us that
results would be similar in Armenia, if a Turkish perception survey
would be carried out,” said Ozan Ağabaş, TÜÖY representative for the
meeting.

“They know very little about Turkey. Indeed, the most
widely recognized Turkish figures are Enver, Celal and Talat pashas
according to information we had at the convention,” Ağabaş said. The
three pashas wielded the power in the Union and Progress Party that
ruled the Ottoman Empire during World War I. They are viewed as the
masterminds of the forced migration of Armenians in 1915, which
Armenians claim to be genocide.

Not only the results, which
will be published as a book, but also the story of the preparation for
the survey is revealing of some troubling tendencies still prevalent in
Turkey that cause problems for Armenians.

“The survey was
preceded by ‘Dialogue Camp,’ a large student convention to boost
Turkish-Armenian cultural dialogue in Ürgüp last March, but many
Armenian youth groups in Istanbul refrained from participating at the
last minute as their parents asked them ‘not to be seen around too
much,’” Tan said. “Nevertheless, we observed that young Armenians in
Turkey are way more eager to establish good contacts with Turks.”

TÜÖY
will step up efforts to remedy what it says are false perceptions, and
seek ways to improve the pace of cultural exchanges between Turks and
Armenians. “The next step will be to prepare a detailed plan on
initiating student exchange programs between university students in
Turkey and Armenia,” Tan said. “Turkish students may be lodged near
Armenian families and vice-versa. The plan will be jointly carried out
with our Armenian partners in Yerevan and is scheduled for launch in
August 2010,” he said.

© Copyright 2008 Hürriyet | Contact

April 26, 2009
President Obama’s Armenian dilemma

Jim Kirdar

The issue of contention is whether the deaths of Armenians during World
War I who revolted against the Ottoman Empire (more than once) was an
alleged genocide or casualties of war. I choose to believe the latter
as an objective American with ancestral ties to the region. As a
federal employee, I have traveled on official business to Turkey and
the neighboring Commonwealth of Independent States (Georgia,
Azerbaijan, and Armenia). During the course of my travels, I have
researched the issue of the alleged “genocide” and engaged in numerous
conversations with the layman of both Turkey and Armenia to determine
the root cause of the ongoing dilemma.

For nearly a century, the Armenians claim to have been victims of a
so-called genocide without merit. An accurate account of the “event”
during World War I against the Armenians by the Ottomans was
retaliatory to the Armenian revolt/uprising.

..hence, an effort to
eradicate NOT exterminate! There is no denying hundreds of thousands
of Armenians were deported a
nd/or lost their lives…but many thousands
of Turks were also killed.

You see, the Armenian Diaspora does not want the logical person to ask
the most fundamental and basic question of all…”Were your [Armenians]
actions thegenesis for the [Turks] reaction?” The educated would have
to conclude regarding the Armenians siding with the Russians to destroy
the Ottoman Empire as an act of betrayal for nearly 600 years of
peaceful coexistence.

The Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were esteemed citizens of which a
grand portion achieved nobility by serving in official capacities
within the Ottoman hierarchy as diplomats, cabinet officials, as well
as scholars and literary icons.

We need not venture far into our own past to realize the tragic attack
on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese that directly threatened our national
security. As the United States, we reacted accordingly to preserve the
integrity of a nation by creating internment camps to isolate and
contain the Japanese community in America.

I implore CNN, for the sake of journalistic integrity, to inquire
further and research on the following:

The Armenian Revolt against the Ottomans (1890-1920)

www.tallarmeniantale.com (by American scholars)

I have been located extensively in both Armenia and Turkey on official
travel for over 12 years. I must say in all sincerity neither
ethnicity wants to continue in defend
ing or advocating events of nearly
100 years ago; people want to move on despite political pressure.
Unfortunately, the Diaspora feels otherwise, thus hampering positive
and meaningful relationships in the land thousands of miles away from
Glendale, CA.

Regards,

Jim M. Kirdar

Special Agent at U.S. Department of Justice

Greater Los Angeles Area

<[email protected]>

000000000000000

BRAVO JIM KIRDAR
YOUR GRAND FATHER LUTFU KIRDAR ( EX GOVERNOR OF ISTANBUL) WOULD BE PROUD OF YOU ME TOO

VEDAT ASLAY ABD

—————————————————000

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Volkan Duygun
<[email protected]> wrote:

I just posted my comment.

Volkan Duygun

Los Angeles Turkish American Assocation President

April 26, 2009

Turkey criticises Obama comments

Men stand beside the skulls and corpses of Armenian victims of the Turkish deportation circa 1915

Armenia estimates that 1.5 million people were killed

Barack Obama’s words on the day marking the killing of Armenians by Turks in World War I were “unacceptable”, Turkey’s foreign ministry has said.

Though Mr Obama did not use “genocide”, as he did during his election campaign, Ankara said he failed to honour those Turks killed by Armenians at the time.

“Everyone’s pain must be shared,” President Abdullah Gul of Turkey said.

President Obama described the deaths of the Armenians as “one of the great atrocities of the 20th Century”.

He appealed for Turks and Armenians to “address the facts of the past as a part of their efforts to move forward”.

The two countries agreed this week on a roadmap for normalising relations.

International recognition… is a matter of restoring historic justice
Serzh Sarkisian
Armenian president
Armenians remember 1915 killings In pictures: Gallipoli remembered

While admitting many Armenians were killed, Turkey, a Nato member and key American ally in the Muslim world, denies committing genocide, saying the deaths resulted from wartime fighting.

Armenia has long campaigned for the loss of its people to be recognised as a crime of genocide and it commemorated the event with ceremonies on Friday.

‘My view unchanged’

“I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed,” Mr Obama said in a written statement.

“My interest remains the achievement of a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts.”

In a January 2008 statement on his campaign website, Mr Obama wrote: “The Armenian genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence.”

“America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides,” the 2008 statement added.

On Friday, he said the Armenians killed in the final days of the Ottoman Empire “must live on in our memories”.

“I strongly support efforts by the Turkish and Armenian people to work through this painful history in a way that is honest, open, and constructive,” he added.

That part of the Obama statement was considered positive by Turkey, a key US ally in the region.

But “history can be construed and evaluated only on the basis of undisputed evidence and documentation,” Turkey’s foreign ministry statement said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8018327.stm

April 26, 2009

Barack Obama Is No Jimmy Carter. He’s Richard Nixon.

THE NEW REALISM

By Michael Freedman | NEWSWEEK

Published Apr 25, 2009
From the magazine issue dated May 4, 2009

Republicans have been trying to link Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter ever since he started his presidential campaign, and they’re still at it. After Obama recently shook hands with Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, GOP ideologue Newt Gingrich said the president looked just like Carter—showing the kind of “weakness” that keeps the “aggressors, the anti-Americans, the dictators” licking their chops.

But Obama is no Carter. Carter made human rights the cornerstone of his foreign policy, while the Obama team has put that issue on the back burner. In fact, Obama sounds more like another 1970s president: Richard Nixon. Both men inherited the White House from swaggering Texans, whose overriding sense of mission fueled disastrous wars that tarnished America’s image. Obama is a staunch realist, like Nixon, eschewing fuzzy democracy-building and focusing on advancing national interests. “Obama is cutting back on the idea that we’re going to have Jeffersonian democracy in Pakistan or anywhere else,” says Robert Dallek, author of the 2007 book, “Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power.”

Nixon met the enemy (Mao) to advance U.S. interests, and now Obama is reaching out to rivals like Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the same reason. “The willingness to engage in dialogue with Iran is very compatible with the approach Nixon would have conducted,” says Henry Kissinger, the architect of Nixon’s foreign policy. “But we’ll have to see how it plays out.” Hillary Clinton has assured Beijing that human rights won’t derail talks on pressing issues like the economic crisis, another sign of Nixonian hard-headedness. And echoing Nixon’s pursuit of détente, Obama has engaged Russia, using a mutual interest in containing nuclear proliferation as a stepping stone to discuss other matters, rather than pressing Moscow on democracy at home, or needlessly provoking it on issues like missile defense and NATO expansion, which have little near-term chance of coming to fruition and do little to promote U.S. security. Thomas Graham, a Kissinger associate who oversaw Russia policy at the National Security Council during much of the younger Bush’s second term, says this approach by Obama, a Democrat, resembles a Republican foreign-policy tradition that dates back to the elder George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, and then even further to Nixon and Kissinger.

It’s hard to know if such tactics will work, of course. But Obama has made clear he understands America’s limitations and its strengths, revealing a penchant for Nixonian pragmatism—not Carter-inspired weakness.

© 2009

Source: Newsweek, Apr 25, 2009

April 26, 2009
Obama’s April 24 statement no comfort for Turks

by Ferruh Demirmen

It is becoming almost an annual ritual for American presidents to issue commemorative declarations every year on April 24 to remember the Armenian “victims” of a tragic historic episode that took place almost 100 years ago. How many other foreign historic episodes nearly a century old do the American presidents commemorate every year? The answer: “zero.”

And wherein lies the secret for such homage to Armenian people? Money, my friends, and lots of it in the form of campaign contributions.

And the hapless Turks, ever watchful if the dreaded word “genocide” will be spelled out on such occasions, take a deep breath if that does not happen. They sit mostly on the sidelines, waiting for the events to unfold. Never mind that, the “g” word or no “g” word, they may be blamed for atrocities in history they did not commit.

The Turk’s attitude is the poor man’s consolation for being spared a bigger affront.

The litany

Last year, referring to “human dignity” and “epic human tragedy,” President Bush issued a statement to “honor the memory of the victims of one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century, the mass killings and forced exile of as many as 1.5 million Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire.”

Not a single word about the context, and the Moslem victims.

It is a melodramatic soap opera that takes place every year, and this year it was no different.

A few days ago President Obama, referring to “man’s inhumanity to man,” called the 1915 events “one of the great atrocities of the 20th century.” He remembered the “1.5 million Armenians who were subsequently massacred or marched to their death in the final days of the Ottoman Empire.”

So, Obama didn’t use the “g” word. Big deal! But he used the equivalent term in Armenian: “Medz Yeghern,” meaning Big Calamity. To the Turks, it is nearly as offensive as the “g” word. And Obama, a smart and perceptive man, should have known.

Never believe the ANCA-type hypocrites who feigned disappointment in Obama’s choice of words because he didn’t use the “g” word. The Dashnakians must have relished Obama’s use of the term “Medz Yeghern.”

It is the first time an American president pandered to the Freudian psyche of the Armenian lobby.

The term “genocide” is a legal term, anyway, and notwithstanding the untoward motives of ANCA-swayed politicians, the UN and the International Court of Justice are the only legal entities empowered to give credibility to that word.

A matter of balance

In all honesty, no one can blame Obama, or any other American president for that matter, to commemorate the tragic sufferings and deaths of Armenians during World War I. We must all condemn tragic events that befell humanity.

But humanity also calls for a sense of balance, or justice. Where is the context, the faithfulness to historical truth, and remembrance of Turkish and Kurdish sufferings and casualties in such condemnations?

Why is the number of Armenian casualties in these statements, which historical records show could not have exceeded half a million, boosted to 1.5 million?

Why is there no mention of the betrayal of the Ottomans by the Armenian populace, who, by forming armed gangs, attacked the Ottoman civilians and Ottoman armies from behind during wartime when the country was under Russian, French and British occupation?

More Moslems perished in the hands of terrorist Armenian gangs than the Armenians under Moslem backlash.

Do the American presidents, or politicians of all stripes for that matter, have the right to be selective in condemning “man’s inhumanity to man?”

Did the sufferings and deaths of Turks, Kurds, and even Jews in some cases, matter at all?

As Obama-the-candidate was being indoctrinated by Dashnakians as to the events during World War I and learn diligently the words “Medz Yeghern,” he should have asked his hosts to teach him how to say “betrayal”or “treason” in Armenian. And cite that word in his April 24 statement.

Those irresistible greenbacks

President Obama is a clever man with a huge popularity at home and abroad. Unlike President Bush, who had a habit of bumbling through his unscripted speeches, Obama chooses his words carefully. His language in his April 24 statement is a testimony to the irresistible effectiveness of ANCA’s lobbying efforts. His perception of history was clouded by Armenian propaganda.

The enthusiastic sponsorship that Obama received on ANCA’s website, through videos and webcasts, in apparent violation of ANCA’s tax-exempt status, is all too fresh in minds.

Obama didn’t stop with one-sided depiction of history. Adding insult to injury, he paid homage to Americans of Armenian descent for their contributions to the American society while ignoring Turkish Americans.

Fair is fair. Does Obama think Turks are zombies of no redeemable value?

Surely, the greenbacks, lots of them, must have done wonders for the Armenian propagandists in shaping Obama’s mind.

Dubious diplomacy

Will the Turks take notice of such indignity? We don’t know. But the higher-ups in the Turkish government in Ankara probably will not. They engaged in secret negotiations in Switzerland toward normalization of relations between Ankara and Yerevan, reporting the “progress” to the Obama administration but leaving the Turkish people – as well as the Azeri people – in the dark.

Which begs the question: Did those high-flying Turkish diplomats in Switzerland think they were representing the Obama administration instead of the Turkish people?

The Azeri have a very legitimate stake in the Turkish-Armenian talks because of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue.

In the meanwhile the Azeri, being briefed about the Switzerland talks by the Russians, who in turn were briefed by the Armenians, became incensed at Turks’ audacity at conducting diplomacy behind their back. The Azeri showed their displeasure by starting energy-related talks with the Russian energy giant Gazprom. Turkey’s east-west Nabucco energy transit project, already suffering from a cold bout, has become shakier still. The Azeri gas is supposed to be the initial feed gas for the project. Ankara now has its hands full trying to placate a jittery Baku.

The imponderables

Setting all this aside, President Obama perhaps deserves credit for tempering his April 24 statement with some moderation. Even Vice President Joe Biden, the inveterate genocide hawk, softened his stance. Obama could have been harsher in his statement. The moderation, of course, stems from anticipation of a growing dialog between Turkey and Armenia that started in Switzerland. Whether that will materialize, is something else. Obama didn’t want to throw cold water on the process.

But with his unmistakable pro-Armenian bias, most Turks will remain unimpressed with Obama’s stance.

The outcome of the Turkish-Armenian talks so far is a “road map” of which details are kept under wraps. Apparently there are no pre-conditions to advance talks to the next level. But the road map has many roadblocks for both sides – as well, for the Azeri.

In the meantime, the Turkish-American relations will become hostage to the outcome of diplomatic traffic between Ankara, Yerevan and Baku. With “Medz Yeghern” language in the background, it is not a reassuring thought. Turks are not comforted by Obama’s language.

Separately, there is no guarantee that a Democratically controlled U.S. House of Representatives under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi will not pass a pro-genocide resolution soon.

[email protected]

April 26, 2009
South Caucasus Presents Tangled Web Of Shifting Allegiances
Turkish soldiers guard a road at Dogu Kapi, on the Turkish-Armenian border, on April 15.

April 24, 2009 By Brian Whitmore Anticipation is in the air in the Armenian village of Margara.

Roads are being repaired. Visitors are inquiring about real estate prices. Talk abounds of new hotels, shops, and restaurants.

A sleepy border hamlet of just 1,500 people, Magara is the site of the only bridge linking Armenia with Turkey — a bridge that has not been used since Ankara closed the border and cut off diplomatic relations with Yerevan in 1993 over the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Now, with talk of an impending Armenian-Turkish rapprochement reaching a fever pitch, locals like 70-year-old Demaxia Manukian are hopeful that their isolation is at an end.

“The more consumers there will be, the better it will be for us. Infrastructure will improve — the streets and the water system,” Manukian tells RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, stressing that the town will need to be spruced up in order to impress all the new visitors if the border opens.

“After all, it’s a matter of prestige. That’s why it has to get better.”

The thaw in relations between Ankara and Yerevan, which began shortly after Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian took office a year ago, has picked up steam in recent months with high-level backing from both the United States and Russia.

The issue takes on added relevance this week, as Armenians on April 24 commemorate the 94th anniversary of the onset of mass killings of ethnic Armenians by Ottoman Turks at the end of World War I — a longstanding source of tension between Turkey and Armenia.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry announced this week that the two sides had agreed to a road map to normalize ties. In testimony before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised Ankara and Yerevan for taking “bold steps” toward reconciliation, adding that “normalizing relations and opening their borders will foster a better environment for confronting that shared, tragic history.”

But the complex Turkish-Armenian relationship does not exist in a vacuum. It is but one thread in a tangled web of grievances and mistrust that have long plagued the South Caucasus — and sparked a sometimes fractious race for influence among the international powers drawn by the lure of energy and strategic location.

Historical Animosities

When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Turkey was the first country to recognize Armenia’s independence, but the warm neighborly relations were short-lived.

Turkey and Azerbaijan, both predominantly Muslim countries, are close allies. When Armenia occupied Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region, Ankara broke off relations with Yerevan and closed the border in solidarity with its ally.

Azerbaijan remains deeply suspicious of a Turkish-Armenian reconciliation and has hinted that it would scuttle the regional balance if its interests are not safeguarded.

Moreover, Yerevan’s longstanding claim that the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I constituted genocide infuriates Ankara and has long been a roadblock to normalizing ties.

The Turkey-Armenia road map, brokered by Switzerland, comes as Armenia and Azerbaijan appear to be edging closer to a resolution of the Karabakh standoff, with apparent help from Moscow.

Both the Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders traveled to Russia this week for talks with officials, and both offered carefully worded, but optimistic, assessments of the talks.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan, which fears it will be the odd man out in a Turkish-Armenian rapprochement, has turned a cold shoulder to its traditional allies in Ankara in recent weeks, with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev refusing a recent invitation to travel to Turkey.

At the same time, Baku has been cozying up to Moscow.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev (right) with Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev in Barbikha on April 17Baku may be seeking to remind Ankara that as the sole energy supplier in the South Caucasus, it is free to choose its friends, and its issues. Analysts say Turkey is trying desperately to persuade Azerbaijan that an opening to Armenia is in everybody’s interests.

“The Turkish strategic perspective and the message that they constantly articulate to Baku is that over the longer term, a normalization with Armenia will actually enhance Turkish leverage and influence in the region — which, from the Turkish point of view is good for Ankara and good for Baku,” says Richard Giragosian, director of the Yerevan-based Center for National and International Studies.

“This is a Turkish strategic agenda based on Turkish national interests. It is not to curry favor with Brussels, nor is it to please Washington. But in the long run from a Turkish perspective, it’s good for the region, it’s good for Azerbaijan, and it’s good for Turkey.”

Baku, however, appears unconvinced.

During his visit to Moscow on April 17, Aliyev said he saw no obstacles to cutting a deal to sell natural gas to Russia’s Gazprom. Aliyev added that Baku hoped to diversify its natural gas exports, most of which are currently sent west to Europe via Turkey.

Such a move would be a severe blow to the proposed U.S.- and EU-backed Nabucco pipeline, which would transport gas from Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan to Europe via the South Caucasus, bypassing Russia.

Baku has also warned that an open Turkish-Armenian border “could lead to tensions in the region and would be contradictory to the interests of Azerbaijan.”

Shifting Alliances

Analysts say Aliyev is attempting play the gas card to get the best possible deal in a settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Specifically, Baku is seeking Russian support for the withdrawal of Armenian troops from regions surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh.

A Karabakh resolution would be a feather in Moscow’s cap as it seeks to reassert itself in its former Soviet territories. But a far greater draw — for Moscow and all the international powers keeping toeholds in the South Caucasus — is energy.

The South Caucasus’ role as a transit hub for oil and gas from the Caspian Sea and Central Asia to Europe is casting a long shadow over the ongoing process as Russia and the West seek to control these crucial energy routes. Ilgar Mammadov, a Baku-based political analyst, says “everybody is playing a sophisticated game.”

After the Armenian-Turkish road map was announced on April 22, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry released a statement saying that “the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations must proceed in parallel with the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied lands of Azerbaijan.”

But Mammadov says Baku’s strategy has risks, as it could push Azerbaijan even “farther into the hands of Russia” and away from the West.

“Baku is trying to use the advantage of its geopolitical location to influence the position of its European and American partners. But if the Russians respond to this policy in a very material way, like pulling Armenian forces back from some of the occupied territories, I think the foreign policy orientation of this regime in Baku may become irreversible,” Mammadov says.

If the Russians respond to this policy in a very material way, like pulling Armenian forces back from some of the occupied territories, I think the foreign policy orientation of this regime in Baku may become irreversible.The moves toward Moscow by Baku, which until now has enjoyed a degree of independence due to its energy wealth, are being watched nervously in Georgia, whose ties with Russia have sunk in recent years, bottoming out during the five-day war over South Ossetia in August.

With no energy resources of its own, and an international partner — the United States — that has grown more accommodating of Moscow in recent months, Georgia may be in the position to suffer most in the event of a resurgence of Russian influence in the region.

Armenia, which has the strongest traditional ties with Moscow despite its relative lack of resources, may prove a more equal partner if the border with Turkey is opened and its commercial isolation ends. In this way, Russia has a vested interest in seeing the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement move forward, and may be using the Karabakh process to help nudge it along.

In a recent interview with RFE/RL, Deputy U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza — who is one of three co-chairmen of OSCE-sponsored mediation on Karabakh — stressed that Washington sees the Armenian-Turkish reconciliation and a Nagorno-Karabakh settlement as “separate tracks.” He added, however, that negotiations on Karabakh are gaining momentum.

“I honestly can say that I feel more than ever a constructive spirit and that we are actually entering a new phase, I hope, of the negotiations,” Bryza said. “The presidents spent a year getting to know each other a bit and knowing each other’s positions. And now I feel we are moving to a new phase with a deeper more detailed discussion of the remaining elements of the basic principles that need to be resolved.”

Football Diplomacy 2.0

Analysts say, however, that Turkish-Armenian reconciliation will likely precede any settlement on Nagorno-Karabakh.

Sabina Freizer, director of the Brussels-based The International Crisis Group’s Europe program says many Caucasus-watchers are pointing to October, when Sarkisian is due to visit Turkey to watch a World Cup qualifying soccer match between Armenia and Turkey, as a possible date to close the deal.

“I am quite optimistic and I believe that if the border is opened and diplomatic relations are established this will change things fundamentally in the South Caucasus. I personally believe that at this point the two sides seem to be close enough that the border should open quite quickly,” Freizer said. “But of course the timing is very political. One date that people are talking about is during President Sarkisian’s visit to Turkey, if it occurs in October. That might be a good time to open the border.”

If an agreement is reached in time for Sarkisian’s visit, it would provide a tidy conclusion to the “football diplomacy” that the Armenian president began in September, when he hosted Turkish President Abdullah Gul to Yerevan to watch the last match between the two national teams.

While the United States has strongly backed Turkey and Armenia normalizing relations, the momentum is also causing some political discomfort for U.S. President Barack Obama.

During a visit to Turkey earlier this month, Obama encouraged the talks between Ankara and Yerevan, saying they “could bear fruit very quickly.”

The recent progress, however, will make it difficult for Obama to make good on a campaign promise to Armenian-Americans to recognize the 90-year-old mass killings as genocide. Such a move now would infuriate Turkey and potentially scuttle any deal to open the Armenian border.

But back in the border village of Margara, residents say they are ready to move beyond painful historical grievances.

Three of Demaxia Manukian’s uncles perished in the mass killings, but he nevertheless says he is ready to move on.

“There are Turks and there are Armenians. The Turks are human beings, too. They rock their children in their cradles just like we do,” Manukian said. “But when politics get injected into this, that is the danger.”

RFE/RL’s Armenian and Azerbaijani services contributed to this report
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Before you post a comment, please read the forum rules Are you human? Please enter the numbers below: Comments 1-4 (of 4) by: J from: US April 24, 2009 20:38 To Dasiey “from Canada”- your poor English betrays your IQ

by: Dasiey from: Canada April 24, 2009 17:18 Mr. Whitmore,

Based on the western media reports such as New York Times,Armenian have sculpted women and children in Azerbaijan just 17 years ago!!
As a humanitarian advocate ,I believe we can Not be blind to the facts that Armenian committed genocide in Azerbaijan just 17 years ago in the city of Kojli.
Armenia so far have not respected The latest U.N Resolution( March 14/2008) which asks Armenia to withdraw from %20 of Azerbaijan’s occupied lands.

Further more,Armenian terrorist group(ASALA)was removed from the list of terrorist in North America is still active! This is their media’s website:

The question is Which nation is the victim?

by: Armenian from: US April 24, 2009 13:16 Armenians will never move on until Turkey accepts genocide. There is no nation on the Earth that could forget genocide, and definitely, not Armenians. It is not politics, it is a matter of historical justice. So please stop publishing rubbish.

by: J from: US April 24, 2009 11:44 Why is Azerbaijan constantly mentioned- it is irrelevant to the Armenian-Turkish reconciliation issue. They should know that by now.
April 26, 2009