Unprecedented progress

The talks leading to agreements for setting up and developing relations between the two countries are set to last up to six weeks, after which it is hoped two protocols will be signed establishing diplomatic ties and bilateral relations.

The move has been broadly welcomed by the international community, particularly by spectators in Europe, which is still eyeing Turkey as a potential EU candidate, and which has a special interest in stabilizing the sometimes-volatile Caucasus region.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the talks were "a crucial step towards normalization of bilateral relations, which would greatly contribute to peace, security and stability throughout an important region of Europe."

But the gestures between Ankara and Yerevan stand for more than just two countries improving ties. They signify the fall of the last piece of the Iron Curtain, the one-time border between the communist East Bloc and the capitalist West. Armenia was once a cog in the former Soviet Union while Turkey has long been a member of the Western military alliance NATO.

This is one of the reasons the border between these two states was one of the most heavily guarded in the world. But since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the border controls have not been eased and relations between the countries have not been upgraded significantly.

A question of genocide

And therein lies the more historical conflict between Turkey and Armenia, one the two countries have danced around for decades: the bitter dispute over the mass killings of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915.

Every year on April 24 Armenians around the world reflect on the 1915 tragedy. At that point, around the beginning of the last century, the state of Armenia did not exist, and most Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire, in what is now modern-day Turkey.

During World War One, the Turks began a program of expulsion and murder of the Armenian population, and Armenians say that around 1.5 million people were killed on death marches and in massacres as a result. Armenians speak of genocide. Turkey, to this day, has refused to acknowledge the killings.

Human rights activist Anahit Bayandour was one of the first Armenians to campaign for reconciliation between the two countries. In 2002, she travelled to Istanbul as part of a delegation to this end.

"If the Turks recognize the genocide they will free themselves of a very big complex, and we have to do this as well," she says. "We've all been hypnotized by this subject, it's all we concentrate on. A person can't live or focus on the future if they're always looking at the past. It's dangerous to immerse yourself completely in the past."

Rapprochement

The first to blink in the standoff was Armenia. Last year, that country's president, Serzh Sargsyan, puckered up and asked his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gul, to join him in watching a soccer match between the two countries' national teams in Yerevan. Gul accepted, and in doing so became the first Turkish head of state to visit Armenia.

Then, in spring this year, both governments published a document laying out a path to a normalization of diplomatic relations. A noteworthy part of the paper was that preconditions to talks had been dropped. Turkey had long demanded that Armenian troops withdraw from the tumultuous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies within the territory of Turkish ally Azerbaijan - another sour note in relations between Ankara and Yerevan.

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said his country would not sacrifice Nagorno-Karabakh in favor of better relations with Turkey.

"There could not be any linkage between the process of normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations and the resolution settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," he said. "Concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Turkey could not play any role of mediation."

Benefits of relations

But Armenia still has much to gain from improved relations with Turkey. The small Caucasus country is landlocked and depends on Georgia and Iran as transit countries for its goods. Those routes can often be expensive and unsafe, and if the border with Turkey was opened Yerevan would gain access to Turkey's Mediterranean harbors.

This could reduce Armenia's transport and logistics costs by around 20 percent, said Arsen Ghazaryan, who heads the Armenian Trade Association and co-chairs the Council for the Development of Armenian-Turkish Business Relations.

"At the moment we import goods from Turkey worth around $100 million (70 million euros) per year," he said. "Armenia has always allowed goods and services into the country without hindrance, whereas Turkey has not. We have the capacity to deliver items from the agricultural sector all the way up to electricity, gas and cement."

For all the positive aspects of the Armenian-Turkish rapprochement, it is not yet certain how the matter will play out domestically for the two countries. In Armenia, the nationalistic Dashnak Party has already left the coalition government in protest at the recent progress made in talks between Ankara and Yerevan.

Author: Gesine Dornblueth/dfm
Editor: Nancy Isenson