Epress.am News from Armenia
Dr. Behlül Özkan, Assistant Professor with the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University, spoke about Armenian-Turkish relations at a press conference today.
Ozkan, first of all, noted that Yerevan is the closest capital city to Turkey’s border, and during his flight to Yerevan, he noticed that his mobile phone was working on its Turkish plan.
“Not only are we close in a territory sense, but also we have cultural similarity. But, regretfully, our two peoples don’t recognize each other, we almost don’t know anything about each other,” he said, adding that that issue must be resolved and that has to happen by means of the border opening.
“Turkey’s current policy adopted by the government assumes a zero policy with neighbors, which the Turkish authorities are able to implement with all other neighbors, except Armenia. Turkey honestly wants to establish good neighborly relations with Armenia and the prerequisite for that is the signing of the Armenia-Turkey Protocols.
“However, Turkey can’t observe Armenian-Turkish relations separate from Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, since not only are Turkish-Azerbaijani relations of a high level, but also the two countries’ peoples have an acceptance of one another: a large part of the Turkish public is pro-Azerbaijani and Turkish-Azerbaijani economic relations are of a high level, there’s a serious Azerbaijan lobby in Turkey.
“On the other hand, when Ankara secures progress in relations with Armenia without certain progress in Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, the Turkish opposition will blame Ankara for being a traitor to the state, while the public will consider that Turkey sold the Azerbaijanis for Armenia,” said Ozkan.