Armenian-Turkish Relations

[Catharsis]

Re: Armenian-Turkish Relations

My oh my, the cyclops is always full of surprises.

Yes Federate, we already knew HAK's position so they are also culprits for the surrender of Armenian rights. This is not "news" since "sugar daddies" for these "presidents" are from without and not from within (the Armenian people). And I say already because "Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty" is a highly biased (and thus at least for me - unreliable) source. Just go over the article and look at all the spin (starting with the title) and their own insertions based on their own agenda (which favors the "normalization" ie surrender of Hay Dat).

Having said that, it is always a good read just for the sake of their position as a biased side and especially "gems" like this -

"...That includes an explicit and official recognition by Armenia of its existing border with Turkey..." An RFE/RL open admission, that "our" own government explicitly denies, constantly repeating that "there are no preconditions."

[Federate]

Re: Armenian-Turkish Relations

Finally, a step in the right direction.
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Armenia Set To Curb Foreign Ownership Of Land


The opposition Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) has secured a crucial government endorsement of its proposal to essentially ban Turkish and other foreign companies from buying land in Armenia’s border regions, it emerged on Wednesday.

The Armenia constitution and other laws do not allow foreign citizens to own land anywhere in the country. However, the ban does not extend to companies and other legal entities owned by foreigners.

Under a package of amendments to the Armenian Land Code drafted by Dashnaktsutyun, those entities would need a special permission from the government and the Defense Ministry to buy plots of land located up to 25 kilometers from the borders.

Dashnaktsutyun lawmakers acknowledged on Wednesday that the amendments are connected with the possible reopening of the Turkish-Armenian border. The nationalist party has long warned that an open border could hurt the Armenian economy and jeopardize the country’s national security.

“It’s not just about Turkey and Turks,” said Ruzan Arakelian. “It’s a matter of national security. A country is protected by its border regions, and our border regions can be at risk at any moment. You can acquire land not only through war.”

Another Dashnaktsutyun deputy, Ara Nranian, said Turkey itself restricts foreign ownership of land. “In Turkey, ownership of land by foreign organizations is not allowed without the military’s permission,” he told RFE/RL. “Things are even stricter there.”

In a letter sent to the National Assembly last week, Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian described the Dashnaktsutyun bill as largely “acceptable” but said the Armenian government believes the proposed restrictions should be even tighter. He said they should cover not only land but also all “facilities needing special protection.”

What is more, that would apply to such facilities located all over the country and not only border areas, according to a copy of the letter obtained by RFE/RL. Sarkisian also confirmed that the government is now looking into relevant Turkish legislation.

In an interview with RFE/RL late last month, Justice Minister Gevorg Danielian said the increasingly real prospect of border opening necessitates changes in Armenia’s criminal, civil and land codes. “When we study [Turkey’s] domestic legislation, we understand that whether we want it or not, from the viewpoint of a proper protection of the country’s security and citizens’ rights and freedoms, there will emerge a need to revise legislation,” he said.

http://www.azatutyun.am/content/article/1875500.html

[Federate]

Re: Armenian-Turkish Relations

Dashnaks Hit Back At Ter-Petrosian Criticism


The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) on Thursday dismissed Levon Ter-Petrosian’s harsh criticism of its hard line on Turkey and said he ceased to be Armenia’s top opposition leader after making far-reaching overtures to President Serzh Sarkisian.

In a landmark speech on Wednesday, Ter-Petrosian implied that he and his Armenian National Congress (HAK) are ready, in principle, to recognize Sarkisian’s legitimacy if he agreed to cooperate with the opposition alliance on major challenges facing the country. He also defended some key aspects of Sarkisian’s policy on Turkey against attacks by Dashnaktsutyun and other “extreme nationalists.”

Top HAK representatives confirmed on Thursday that the remarks were a cooperation offer addressed to the current Armenian leadership. One of them, Vahagn Khachatrian, summed up the former Armenian president’s message as follows: “If you are ready to strive for a big idea, we are ready to talk to you about that.” The HAK was “always ready” to collaborate with the authorities under certain circumstances, he said.

“The Armenian National Congress has never made secret of that,” agreed Aram Sarkisian, another leader of the bloc. He said Ter-Petrosian gave the president “a definitely good piece of advice.”

“He is offering the authorities a deal,” scoffed Giro Manoyan, Dashnaktsutyun’s foreign policy spokesman. He said Ter-Petrosian and his allies are now ready to stop challenging Sarkisian’s legitimacy “in return for something” which should be a “subject of haggling.”

“I think he is resorting to that for two reasons,” said Manoyan. “First, because he is a supporter of the defeatist Armenia-Turkey policy. Second, he acknowledged that he doesn’t have much to do as an opposition anymore and is keen to cut a deal with the authorities to ensure his survival.”

Manoyan said Ter-Petrosian’s extraordinary statements also heralded the end of the HAK’s “monopoly on opposition.” “His statements show that they have not only lost that monopoly but no longer lead the opposition,” he told RFE/RL. “There is now another opposition that is doing the job.”

Manoyan referred to a Dashnaktsutyun-led coalition of a dozen mostly small opposition groups that have strongly condemned the Turkish-Armenian agreements to normalize bilateral relations which were signed last month. They were the main target of Ter-Petrosian’s hour-long speech.

The ex-president was particularly scathing about that their insistence on future Armenian territorial claims to Turkey which seem to be precluded by the agreements. He said that has only earned Sarkisian more credibility in the international arena and overshadowed what he sees as the only “unacceptable” point of the deal: the creation of a Turkish-Armenian “sub-commission” of history experts.

Manoyan said Ter-Petrosian “distorted” the Dashnaktsutyun’s position on Turkish-Armenian relations because he is “jealous” about the nationalist party’s rising profile.

Also alleging “jealousy” was Razmik Zohrabian, a deputy chairman of President Sarkisian’s Republican Party of Armenia (HHK). Zohrabian refrained from commenting on the HAK leader’s overtures to the government, focusing instead on other parts of his speech that were critical of the Sarkisian administration.

“Levon Ter-Petrosian wishes he had been elected president and managed this policy on Turkish-Armenian relations,” Zohrabian told RFE/RL. “But naturally, he wasn’t elected and can’t manage [that policy] and that’s why keeps repeating scenes of jealousy.”

http://www.azatutyun.am/content/article/1876494.html

[Federate]

Re: Armenian-Turkish Relations

Sefilian and the Hunchaks have no place with LTP's cronies. They are losing legitimacy in the eyes of many by continuing their support for the cyclops even though their alliance is incompatible with their respective views. They should break away and join the ARF's led opposition.
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Allies Disagree With Ter-Petrosian Line On Turkey


Two small groups aligned with the opposition Armenian National Congress (HAK) took issue on Friday with its top leader Levon Ter-Petrosian’s harsh attacks on nationalist critics of Armenia’s rapprochement with Turkey.

The Alliance of Armenian Volunteers (HKH), a hard-line pressure group mainly campaigning against any territorial concessions to Azerbaijan, said it will hold a meeting soon to discuss Ter-Petrosian’s latest speech and its future relationship with the HAK. The HKH’s Lebanese-Armenian leader, Zhirayr Sefilian, told RFE/RL that he will not make further comments on the matter until then.

The other nationalist force, the Social-Democratic Hnchakian Party (SDHK), made clear that it supports Armenian territorial claims to Turkey and believes that Armenia should normalize relations with its historical foe until it recognizes the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

“The party rules out the establishment of any diplomatic relations with Turkey until Turkey recognizes the genocide as a great crime against the Armenian people,” said Lyudmila Sargsian, chairwoman of the SDHK’s organization in Armenia. Such recognition should be followed by Turkish land and financial reparations, she said.

Ter-Petrosian subjected political parties espousing such irredentist agenda, notably the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), to bitter criticism in a speech delivered at a high-level meeting of the HAK on Wednesday. He said that “historical rights” championed by them is not a valid concept in international law these days and that Turkey will never agree to normalize relations with Armenia without precluding the possibility of Armenian territorial claims. The HAK should therefore support a controversial provision of the recently signed Turkish-Armenian agreements that commits Yerevan to recognize Armenia’s existing border with Turkey, said Ter-Petrosian.

“Our party definitely doesn’t share that approach,” Sargsian told RFE/RL. But she said the SDHK, which is the oldest Armenian party, has no intention to break away from the Ter-Petrosian-led alliance of about two dozen opposition groups despite the disagreement.

“We want to have a legitimately elected government,” explained the SDHK leader. “We want to have a democratic country. These are the sublime values around which we cooperate with the HAK.”

http://www.azatutyun.am/content/article/1877720.html

[Federate]

Re: Armenian-Turkish Relations

First heard about him from seruven.
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Turkish-Armenian Writer Reports Death Threats


A Turkish-Armenian newspaper columnist claimed on Friday to have received hundreds of deaths threats after altering a famous quote from the founder of modern Turkey to make a case for sweeping reforms in the country.

The quote was drawn from a 1923 speech by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in which he urged the Turkish youth to fight hard for their homeland. “Your first duty is to preserve and to defend Turkish Independence and the Turkish Republic forever,” declared Ataturk.

“Your first duty is to be a human being,” Sevan Nisanyan, an Istanbul-based ethnic Armenian intellectual, countered in an October 29 article published by the “Taraf” daily. “This is the very foundation of your existence and your future. This foundation is your most precious treasure.”

Speaking to RFE/RL by phone, Nisanyan said the appeal infuriated nationalist Turks and he has since received about 800 e-mails and letters containing verbal abuse and threats to kill him. “People have gone mad,” he said. “The reaction has been like ‘How dare an Armenian write such strong and negative things about Ataturk?’”

Some of those letters were reprinted by “Taraf” this week. “We will make you write the correct version of the ‘Address to Youth’ with your own blood. … I’ll kill you like that Hrant Dink dog,” one of them read, referring to the Turkish-Armenian editor gunned down in Istanbul in January 2007.

“I believe that the military is behind this uproar,” Nisanyan charged, adding that he has already appealed to the Turkish police for protection. “The police have been the more liberal party in recent years,” he said. “The biggest problem is the military. The police have been very friendly and helped me a lot.”

http://www.azatutyun.am/content/article/1877715.html

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Armenian-Turkish Relations

In a letter sent to the National Assembly last week, Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian described the Dashnaktsutyun bill as largely “acceptable” but said the Armenian government believes the proposed restrictions should be even tighter. He said they should cover not only land but also all “facilities needing special protection.”

What is more, that would apply to such facilities located all over the country and not only border areas, according to a copy of the letter obtained by RFE/RL.

Almost all of Armenia's "facilities" are already foreign owned - owned by Russia!

[Federate]

Re: Armenian-Turkish Relations

Georgia to remain vital transit route for Armenia
Regardless of whether Turkey put an end to its blockade of Armenia

The map portrays the Turkish rail system. The distance between Armenia and the Black Sea is smaller via Georgia than it is via Turkey, and the rail lines in Turkey travel more slowly, owing to the bad shape of the lines.


Kars - Armenia is a landlocked country that is also blockaded by two of its four neighbors. One needs only to look at a map to understand the dire situation; territorially the smallest of the former Soviet republics, it is blockaded to the west by Turkey and to the east by Azerbaijan. In fact, 80 percent of the length of its borders is closed, and with it, all roads, rail lines, and pipelines from Turkey and Azerbaijan into Armenia are also closed.

Armenia has a border that's a mere 40 kilometers long but extremely important along the length of the Araks River, which it shares with its southern neighbor, Iran. For Armenia, the border with Georgia is more vital because the main land, rail, and seaborne transportation routes, which allow Armenia to connect with the outside world, pass through Georgia. About 70 percent of Armenia's foreign commodity circulation is realized through Georgian territory - via the Georgian rail system and the ports of Batumi and Poti.

The natural gas pipeline through which Russian natural gas flows into Armenia passes through Georgian territory. A few years ago an alternative Iran-Armenia pipeline was built. However, today Armenia continues to use Russian gas. The gas that reaches Armenia through Iran is converted to electricity and sent back to Iran.

The re-opening of the Russian-Georgian Upper Lars-Kazbegi land border crossing can only have a small effect on Armenia's economy because for Armenia the Georgian rail and Black Sea ports have the most significance.

In the event that the blockade by Turkey is lifted and the Turkey-Armenia border re-opens, Armenia will have new alternative routes to the outside world. With competition, Georgia will be forced to reduce transportation tariffs by a certain amount. Armenia naturally will also benefit to an extent from Turkish transit lines, initially by land transit. However, in the coming decades, thanks to its geographical position, and the good condition of its rail lines and ports, it is Georgia that will continue to remain the most important transit country for Armenia.

In pitiful shape

The lifting of the Turkish blockade would signifies the following: the land border crossings (one at Alijan-Margara by the Araks, which is only 40 km west of Yerevan, and the Kars-Gyumri border crossing) will open; the Kars-Gyumri rail line between Turkey and Armenia, which has been idle since 1993, will open. Air transit between Armenia and Turkey, which was also closed for a few years by Ankara, reopened in 1996. Today, there are regular flights between Yerevan and Istanbul, and in the summer months between Yerevan and Antalya also.
If the border is opened, will Armenian cargo transport immediately benefit from Turkish rail lines? It will benefit only minimally because the present physical condition of the Turkish rail system is not promising. Simply put, the Turkish rail system is in such pitiful shape that it is impossible to transport serious amounts of cargo.

As we noted, 70 percent of Armenia's foreign commodity circulation is realized via Georgian rail and Black Sea ports. If we look at the map, will it be possible or advantageous for Armenia to transport its cargo through the Turkey-Armenia border, if it is opened, via Turkish rail and Turkish sea ports?

A slow trip

The rail line from Yerevan to the sea ports of Batumi and Poti are three times shorter than the rail line from Yerevan to the Turkish port of Samsun. Moreover, while the Georgian railroad travels over mostly flatlands, the Turkish rail line passes primarily through mountain ranges. Why should Armenia make use of the Turkish rail line when it is three times longer and in such bad shape? If it takes Armenian cargo less than a day from Yerevan to Batumi, then from Yerevan to the Turkish port of Samsun it would take more than two days.

Even if Turkish transit tariffs are incomparably cheaper than Georgian tariffs, still, in the coming decades Armenia will be using Georgian rail lines because the Turkish railroad, which was built a hundred years ago, is simply not in a condition to carry out cargo transportation.

It takes passenger trains 45 hours to travel from Kars to Istanbul. This means that Turkish trains travel, on average, 20-25 km/hr. And it is exactly for this reason that the Turks themselves rarely use trains.

Georgian transit will significantly lose value for Armenia when there is a resolution to the Nagornox-xKarabakh conflict and Armenia and Azerbaijan establish normal relations. In that case, aside from the Georgian rail system, Armenia will also equally make use of Azerbaijani railroads that will take it to its most important strategic, political and economic partner, Russia and then on to Europe.

However, there are no expectations that in the near future there will be a resolution of the Karabakh conflict and the railroads connecting Armenia and Azerbaijan - Yerevan-Nakhichevan-Baku and Ichevan-Baku - will begin operating. In fact, if Yerevan and Baku establish normal relations, then Armenia can reconnect with the Iranian rail system also. The Yerevan-Tabriz-Tehran rail line has also been idle for the past two decades because it passes through Nakhichevan.

Armenia and Iran have come to a political decision to build a new railroad, which will cost somewhere between 1 and 2 billion dollars. If that railroad is built, it will be significant, but once again it will not replace the Georgian railroad. For Armenia, perhaps the re-opening of the Abkhazian rail line would be more significant - but remains unrealistic, taking into account the current state of Russian-Georgian relations.

http://www.reporter.am/go/article/2009-11-13-georgia-to-remain-vital-transit-route-for-armenia

[Haykakan]

Re: Armenian-Turkish Relations

ABDULAH GUL: ARMENIAN-TURKISH BORDER WILL SOON BE OPENED

armradio.am
23.11.2009 18:25

Asked by Italian "La Stampa" when the citizens of Armenia and Turkey
will be able to pass the border, Turkish President Abdulah Gul said:
"That obstacle will be soon resolved. Of course we'll need some
"technical" period as the document should pass a discussion stage
in the parliaments of both countries. Then we are going to appoint
Ambassadors and the land border will be opened. It's long since the
air border is open," Gul told Italian paper.

Gul declared his country is serious to continue its strategy of
having no problems with neighbors. "If the status of democracy rises
in the country, all taboos disappear," said Gul in view of Armenian
and Kurdish conflicts. Regarding the ties with Armenia, Abdulah Gul
said: "If we speak generally, the world is changing and Turkey is
changing also."

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Armenian-Turkish Relations

It will benefit only minimally because the present physical condition of the Turkish rail system is not promising. Simply put, the Turkish rail system is in such pitiful shape that it is impossible to transport serious amounts of cargo.

As we noted, 70 percent of Armenia's foreign commodity circulation is realized via Georgian rail and Black Sea ports. If we look at the map, will it be possible or advantageous for Armenia to transport its cargo through the Turkey-Armenia border, if it is opened, via Turkish rail and Turkish sea ports?

A slow trip

The rail line from Yerevan to the sea ports of Batumi and Poti are three times shorter than the rail line from Yerevan to the Turkish port of Samsun. Moreover, while the Georgian railroad travels over mostly flatlands, the Turkish rail line passes primarily through mountain ranges. Why should Armenia make use of the Turkish rail line when it is three times longer and in such bad shape? If it takes Armenian cargo less than a day from Yerevan to Batumi, then from Yerevan to the Turkish port of Samsun it would take more than two days.

Even if Turkish transit tariffs are incomparably cheaper than Georgian tariffs, still, in the coming decades Armenia will be using Georgian rail lines because the Turkish railroad, which was built a hundred years ago, is simply not in a condition to carry out cargo transportation.

I wonder who writes this sort of rubbish (and what idiots pay them for it)?

The Turkish railway system is modern and in excellent repair and its long-distance rolling stock is as modern as anywhere in Europe - and decades ahead of anything in Georgia or Armenia. The line east of Ankara is single-line only, and it is that that restricts the speed and frequency of the trains.
Few people use trains for long-distance travel because the road system in Turkey is very good, well maintained, and always taking the direct route since they are built with a zero regard for the amount of environmental destruction caused or the number of tunnels or bridges that would need to be constructed. There are fast and relatively inexpensive bus routes everywhere - and almost every city is linked to Ankara or Istanbul by daily flights. Goods are mostly transported by road for the same reasons. The train lines were built for strategic reasons, and that together with the geology means that lines between cities are rarely direct.

[Armanen]

Re: Armenian-Turkish Relations

I wonder who writes this sort of rubbish (and what idiots pay them for it)?

The Turkish railway system is modern and in excellent repair and its long-distance rolling stock is as modern as anywhere in Europe - and decades ahead of anything in Georgia or Armenia. The line east of Ankara is single-line only, and it is that that restricts the speed and frequency of the trains.
Few people use trains for long-distance travel because the road system in Turkey is very good, well maintained, and always taking the direct route since they are built with a zero regard for the amount of environmental destruction caused or the number of tunnels or bridges that would need to be constructed. There are fast and relatively inexpensive bus routes everywhere - and almost every city is linked to Ankara or Istanbul by daily flights. Goods are mostly transported by road for the same reasons. The train lines were built for strategic reasons, and that together with the geology means that lines between cities are rarely direct.

Would you mind explaing what 'strategic' reasons the turks were thinking of when they built the roads and train lines?