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Semneby: Turkey Took "Tactical Step Backwards" On Normalizing Relati

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  • Semneby: Turkey Took "Tactical Step Backwards" On Normalizing Relati

    SEMNEBY: TURKEY TOOK "TACTICAL STEP BACKWARDS" ON NORMALIZING RELATIONS WITH ARMENIA

    /PanARMENIAN.Net/
    18.06.2009 11:01 GMT+04:00

    /PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkey has taken a "tactical step backwards"
    on normalizing relations with Armenia because of hostile domestic
    reaction to the move, the EU's envoy to the region said in an interview
    with Reuters.

    "A step back was taken by the Turkish side ... but this is not a
    U-turn," said EU South Caucasus envoy Peter Semneby. "We expect the
    conversations will continue."

    After decades of hostility, Muslim Turkey and Christian Armenia
    announced in April a "roadmap" for re-establishing diplomatic relations
    and opening their shared border.

    But Ankara's Muslim ally Azerbaijan said Armenia should first leave
    Nagorno-Karabakh, a mostly ethnic Armenian enclave which broke away
    after fighting a bloody war with Azerbaijan in the 1990s and claims
    independence.

    Turkey then offered support for the Azeri position, complicating
    further progress in talks with Armenia.

    Semneby said in the interview, conducted at the end of a visit to
    Moscow last week, that it was important the "pause" in the peace
    process between Turkey and Armenia did not last too long because of
    the risk that impetus would be lost.

    "The normalization (with Armenia) became the subject of quite
    widespread and heated discussion in Turkey," he added in earlier
    remarks to a small group of reporters. "It seems to me, this discussion
    became more heated than was expected." Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip
    Erdogan promised Azerbaijan during a visit to Baku last month that
    Ankara would not open its border with Armenia - closed since 1993 -
    until Armenia ended what he termed its occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh.

    "I see this as a Turkish tactical step backwards," Semneby told
    Reuters. "But fundamentally, the new foreign policy that has been
    pursued by the Erdogan government, I don't see that this policy
    is changing."
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