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Armenian and Turkish NGOs are keen on continuing dialogue to help thaw out their countries historically frosty relations, reports the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.
A conference in Yerevan on Tuesday hosted by the Eurasia Partnership Foundation, USAID and the Yerevan Press Club inaugurated a new wave of projects to strengthen civil society interaction between Turkey and Armenia despite slow-moving normalization efforts.
“Good neighbors talk over the garden fence,” Jonathan Stark, a Eurasia Partnership Foundation board member, told the meeting on Tuesday. “This project will advance the concept of neighborly relations between Armenia and Turkey.”
The new project is expected to last until September 2012 and has a budget of nearly $2.5 million. It envisions support for cross-border peer group projects and provides an opportunity for interaction between state actors on various levels.
A Eurasia Partnership Foundation project, initially launched in January 2010, was meant to be called “The Second and Third Days of the Turkish-Armenian Rapprochement,” but unfortunately the protocols were never ratified, said Gevorg Ter-Gabrielian, director of the EPF.
Speaking of a strategic vision for NGOs after the failure of the rapprochement, Professor Mensür Akgün, director of Istanbul Kültür University’s Global Policy Center, or GPoT, said civil society groups on both sides have to be ready to approach relevant authorities and deliver their messages. “Civic organizations have to be ready to be facilitators for state actors.”
Another partner, the International Center for Human Development, or ICHD, will facilitate dialogue and interaction between state actors in the framework of the recently revived Armenia Turkey Rapprochement Process, presented at the meeting in Yerevan on Tuesday.
The ICHD’s role will include the facilitation of off-the-record discussions via video conference – as official travel is impossible – engaging in capacity-building and skill training for state employees at ministries and organizing town hall meetings on Turkish-Armenian relations.
NGOs are important as long as there are no official relations, Vahagn Khachatryan, the former mayor of Yerevan, told the Hürriyet.
“The future of Armenia lies as part of a region,” he said, adding that he advocates an open-border policy in the neighborhood.
Regional cooperation should take place between Iran, Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Khachatryan said. Manufacturing, science, innovation and transport, especially railways, would benefit from open borders.
“In Turkey, they do not know Armenia; only a small group [of Turks] has knowledge of modern Armenia,” said Tevan Poghosyan, executive director at the ICHD. Pointing out Armenia’s and Turkey’s EU integration efforts, Poghosyan said the European Union could be a common point.
The European Neighborhood Policy, introduced to tie those countries to the east and south of the EU into the bloc, has had a positive impact on the development of relations between Turkey and Armenia, said Boris Navasardian, president of the Yerevan Press Club.
“The Eastern Partnership initiative has a positive impact on democratization, stability and security in Armenia, which directly affects the Armenian-Turkish rapprochement,” Navasardian told the Daily News.