PM Erdogan soothes Azerbaijan's concerns over Turkey-Armenia thaw

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

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Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul late Wednesday that his country faces difficulty stemming from an ongoing process that has continued between Azerbaijan and Armenia for years.   

"It is difficult to overcome problems between Turkey and Armenia unless the Azerbaijani-Armenian dispute is resolved. We hope that the U.N. Security Council will acknowledge Armenia as an occupier in Nagorno-Karabakh and make a decision to call on Armenia to withdraw from the region. The Minsk Group has been trying to resolve that dispute for more than 17 years," he said. 

Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic relations, and their border has been closed for more than a decade over Armenia's invasion of territory that accounts for 20 percent of Azerbaijan – a frozen conflict legacy of the Soviet Union known as Nagorno-Karabakh.

Erdogan said Ankara had already taken a step and proposed to form the Caucasian Stability and Cooperation Platform with the participation of Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.

"The Azerbaijani-Armenian dispute should be resolved first. Then, problems between Turkey and Armenia can be solved, too," Erdogan added.

Turkey and Armenia have, however, been engaged in a normalization process, including the reopening of the border, since Turkish President Abdullah Gul paid a landmark visit to Yerevan last year to watch a World Cup qualifying football match between the countries’ national teams.

Azeri officials have expressed concern over the prospect of the border being reopened and some media reports suggested that Baku might even go one step further in halting the sale of natural gas to Turkey.

Azerbaijan, which has strong cultural and historic ties with Turkey, has said opening the border before the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the country’s occupied territories would run counter to its national interests.