Blog Archive

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Turkey's Preconditions to Border Opening: Laughable!



It seems that Turkey comes up with stranger and stranger requests weekly. Maybe not entirely so, but I found this particular attempt laughable.
"We do not want the border with Armenia to be opened," announced head of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Igdir Kemal Arslan. According to him, the businessmen of Igdir are against the opening of the border as, "Armenia has occupied 20% of the territory of Azerbaijan."

According to the Turkish official, as a precondition for the opening of the border, "Armenia must give back the occupied territories to Azerbaijan, recognize the borders of Turkey and refrain from the recognition of the Armenian Genocide."
First, this is not Turkey's official stance, it seems, but rather that of Igdir, a city in Eastern Turkey. Second, do you realize that if we refrain from the recognition of the Armenian Genocide - and that is what Kemal Arslan suggests - then that means a Genocide actually took place, which is the opposite of the official Turkish stance. Ah, they'll come to terms with their past.

Anyway, this whole thing is laughable to me. I've covered the border issue in previous entries, if you're interested in finding out more.

Source: A1+

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

that is quite ironic, since izmir is very poor because of the border closing, and can only profit from it being opened..