Armenia-Turkey Relations Looking Up, But Armenia-Azerbaijan Relations Increasingly Worse: Sabine Freizer

Armenian journalists in Istanbul yesterday met with International Crisis Group (ICG) Europe Program Director Sabine Freizer (sometimes anglicized as Sabina Fraser) and ICG’s Turkish analysts as part of the “Dialogue-Building between Turkey and Armenia” project organized by the Yerevan-based Internews Media Support NGO and the Istanbul-based GPOT (Global Politics Trend Center), reports local daily Aravot (“Morning”).

“Sabine Freizer didn’t consider a short war between Azerbaijan and Armenia to be likely: ‘Azerbaijan believes that it will win the war, in case of a quick attack, they’ll take a few low regions, Aghdam, Fizuli, but I think that will never happen because if the Azerbaijanis suddenly attack, the Armenians will respond, and there will be a complicated situation.’

“Freizer is confident that Turkey also doesn’t want war. As for normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia, the International Crisis Group [Europe Program] Director noticed significant progress: ‘Of course, the borders are not yet open, but Turks and Armenians are in a dialogue, they attempt to understand each other, while in the ‘part of’ Azerbaijan and Armenia, there is no progress; moreover, everything becomes increasingly worse, since Azerbaijan claims theirs and Armenians only think of Karabakh’s independence. This is a disturbing circumstance for us’,” reports Aravot.