Turkey and Armenia draw up road map to mend ties

Azerbaijan charges agreement ‘would be contradictory’ to its interests

A Turkish train heads to Akyaka in Kars province, the last station between Turkey and Armenia on April 16. As Ankara and Yerevan announced an agreement on a road map to normalize ties, work intensified on both sides of the border to boost the Transcaucasian freight market.

By Thomas Grove - Reuters

ISTANBUL – Turkey and Armenia have agreed on a road map to normalize ties after nearly a century of hostility, a move that would boost Turkey’s relations with the EU and the US but could upset its ally, oil-rich Azerbaijan.

The deal, weeks after President Barack Obama urged Turkey to resolve the issue, came on the eve of the commemoration of mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915.

The two states have since last year held high-level talks to restore ties, which could mean reopening a border shut in 1993.

”The two parties have achieved tangible progress and mutual understanding in this process and they have agreed on a comprehensive framework for the normalization of their bilateral relations,” the foreign ministries of both countries said late on Wednesday, without elaborating.

The years of standoff isolated impoverished Armenia and obstructed Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in solidarity with Muslim ally Azerbaijan, which was fighting Armenian-backed separatists in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Azerbaijan, Europe’s key hope as a supplier of gas for the proposed Nabucco pipeline that would run through Turkey and cut Europe’s dependence on Russia, warned against any deal that does not include a withdrawal of troops from Nagorno-Karabakh. “Opening the border could lead to tensions in the region and would be contradictory to the interests of Azerbaijan,” Azeri Foreign Ministry spokesman Elkhan Polukhov said.

Polukhov said it was “too early” to discuss what steps Azerbaijan might take in retaliation, but some analysts have warned it may affect European energy security plans.

“If Azerbaijan feels that Turkey is betraying them, then why would Azerbaijan not move in a Russian direction? And the Russians are offering to buy all their gas at European prices,” said Svante Cornell, research director at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute.

However, Wolfango Piccoli, an analyst for Eurasia consultancy group, said it was unlikely that Azerbaijan would decide to put “all its eggs in the Russian basket,” especially after the brief Russian-Georgian war last year.

Azerbaijan has close linguistic and cultural ties with Turkey. It has also hoped to use NATO-member Turkey’s leverage to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, one of the most intractable conflicts arising from the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Turkey and Armenia did not say how they would tackle the dispute over the 1915 killings, which has traumatized ties.

Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks but denies that up to 1.5 million died in what some have described as genocide.

Washington welcomed the framework agreement and urged Ankara and Yerevan to normalize ties “within a reasonable time frame.”

The announcement, brokered under Swiss mediation, has given Obama time to hold off on a US Congress resolution that seeks to describe the 1915 killings as genocide, a move that would hurt US-Turkish ties.

Obama said he stood by his view that the killings were genocide but added he did not want to obstruct a Turkish-Armenian thaw.

He faces a test on April 24, the Armenian day of remembrance, when US presidents traditionally issue a statement.

“We urge Armenia and Turkey to proceed according to the agreed framework and road map,” acting State Department spokesman Robert Wood said in a statement.

A Turkish Foreign Ministry official said he would not discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh issue further, adding only, “We will continue with our policy of silent diplomacy.” Armenia has controlled Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies wholly within Azerbaijan, since a war that broke out in the last days of the Soviet Union. A ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh, brokered by Russia, has held since 1994. Switzerland has been acting as a mediator between Turkey and Armenia.

Hugh Pope, an author of books on Turkey and an analyst with the International Crisis Group, said the road map was a “new high-water mark in Turkish-Armenia relations,” but said Turkey would have to strike a fine balance in the Caucasus.