Wednesday, 27 May 2009Turkey and Azerbaijan are not only ordinary allies and neighbors, they are also two strategic partners, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Tuesday during an official visit to Baku.
Davutoglu arrived in the Azerbaijani capital late on Monday when he flew from Damascus with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Elmar Mammadyarov. The two ministers had participated in the 36th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) held in the Syrian capital.
In Turkey, everybody has different political thoughts, however, everybody attaches importance to relations with Azerbaijan, Davutoglu said on Tuesday at a joint press conference following talks with Mammadyarov, the Anatolia news agency reported. "Turkey and Azerbaijan are not two ordinary friend, neighbor and brother countries, they are at the same time two strategic partners.
One of the fundamental foreign policy priorities which is embraced by everybody in Turkey -- no matter what political thought those [people] have -- is the existing strategic partnership with Azerbaijan," DavutoÄŸlu was quoted as saying by the Cihan news agency.
The minister, whose visit to Baku is his second official visit upon being appointed to his current post earlier this month, underlined that nobody should have doubts about Turkey's sensitivities concerning Azerbaijan.
Kiniklioglu we pass Turkish concerns to Armenians
Suat Kiniklioglu, member of Parliament and deputy chairman of external affairs for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), has said a workshop like this week's Turkey-Armenia relations gives an opportunity to Turkey to talk about concerns of the both sides as the process of rapprochement with Armenia continues. "We want to share the concerns in Turkey here. Even from the language used at the workshop we see that we don't know each other well. We talk about Turkey-Armenia relations as well as Azerbaijan's role in it in the context of regional dynamics," said Kınıklıoğlu yesterday at Turkey-Armenia Relations Workshop organized by the Foundation for Political Economic and Social Research (SETA).
Asked about the influence of the Karabakh issue in that regard, Kınıklıoğlu said there is parallel process to the Turkey-Armenia negotiations on the issue taken by the Minsk group. "The process is parallel and they support each other. But these are difficult topics. They would have been solved in 16 or 17 if they were easy," he said. "Turkey has good relations with both Azerbaijan and Georgia, and wants to add Armenia into this. News of the normalization process with Armenia affects Karabakh but the film is continuing and there will be developments, hopefully positive." He also indicated that normalization of relations with Armenia and resolution to the Karabakh conflict are both "mutually reinforcing each other and interacting."
Attending the workshop Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the Caucasus Institute based in Yerevan, said that they don't expect that the border between Armenia and Turkey will be open soon, closed by Turkey in 1993 protesting the Armenian occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan. "We don't expect that the border will be open in a short period of time but once the border opens historical dimension of Turkey-Armenia relations will not be so much important," he said.
Most of the participants at the workshop indicated that a closed border with Armenia, "an anomaly of the Cold War years," should be corrected, and this is the last legacy of the Soviet Union as NATO member Turkey faces a closed border.
Bülent Aras from SETA said the Cold War has been continuing in the Caucasus although it ended in the rest of the world. Yonca Poyraz DoÄŸan Ä°stanbul
"Our Azerbaijani siblings should know that Turkey will be by the side of Azerbaijan in the future as well, as it has been in history," DavutoÄŸlu said. "Our message intended for the actors in the region, particularly intended for Armenia, is very open and clear. The region should now be cleansed of occupations, stresses and high tensions," he added, in an apparent reference to the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.
The way of resolving frozen conflicts in the region passes through setting bilateral, multilateral and all kinds of relations oriented toward resolution in motion, DavutoÄŸlu said, adding: "Past incidents showed that frozen problems are like bombs ready to explode in our hands and have the potential of increasing regional tensions. Now, the time has come to get rid of these bombs which are ready to explode."
Turkey, in every platform, has been voicing the need to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, DavutoÄŸlu said, stressing that Turkey supports the resolution of the conflict within the framework of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity, while also calling on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group of countries, mediating talks between Yerevan and Baku to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, to intensify their efforts.
Mammadyarov said they had reviewed bilateral relations between the countries and that the relationship between the two neighbors has been continuing well. He expressed confidence for the future relations between Ankara and Baku.
Mammadyarov said his country is not satisfied with the trade turnover level of $2 billion between Turkey and Azerbaijan: "We also discussed cooperation in the fields of energy, economy and culture. Our countries have signed around 150 documents in total, but we don't have to stop at what has been achieved." |
Wednesday, 27 May 2009
TZ
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