Far below Mount Ararat’s snow-covered peak, history weighs heavy on the shoulders of Turks and Armenians seeking to overcome animosity generated by genocide claims and territorial disputes.
A recent diplomatic initiative to restore ties between the arch foes has fueled hopes of economic and strategic benefits. It has also stirred up century-old distrust and fears among locals as they watch developments from the militarized frontier.
The distrust of many in Turkey’s Igdir Province is illustrated by a monument near Ararat consisting of five 40m-tall swords thrust toward the sky. It commemorates the killing of Turks by Armenians during and after World War I.
The memorial is a riposte to Armenian claims, supported by many countries and academics, that Ottoman Turk forces killed 1.5 million Armenians in a 1915 genocide that is commemorated across the border in Armenia on April 24.
“In Igdir there are still living witnesses who tell their descendants about the killings by Armenians here,” said Goksel Gulbeyi, chairman of an association set up to refute Armenian genocide claims.
Turkey fiercely rejects the genocide charge, saying many were killed on both sides during the conflict.
“There are people here who still feel resentment. The border shouldn’t be reopened until they are reassured,” he said.
At the Alican border gate 15km away, soldiers send journalists away while farmers dig in surrounding land.
Gulbeyi’s group has launched a campaign to block the reopening of the border, closed by Turkey in 1993 in support of its traditional Muslim ally Azerbaijan, which was fighting Armenian-backed separatists in the breakaway mountain region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said this month the deadlock over Nagorno-Karabakh, where a fragile ceasefire holds but a peace accord has never been signed, should be resolved before any deal is struck between Turkey and Armenia.
There are also fears in Igdir, which has a large Azeri population, that Armenia covets Turkish territory. Mount Ararat, which provides a backdrop to the capital Yerevan, is a national symbol of Armenia and is pictured on its currency.
A breakthrough between Turkey and Armenia could help shore up stability in the Caucasus, criss-crossed by oil and gas pipelines which make it of strategic importance to Russia, Europe and the US.
Western diplomats are concerned that in retaliation for the border reopening, Azerbaijan might be unwilling to sell its gas in the future through Turkey to Europe, and instead send most of it to Russia for re-export.
Despite the concerns, tentative cross-border contacts have generated fragile optimism among many in eastern Turkey, where livelihoods are largely made from farming and where per capita income is around a tenth of levels in affluent western Turkey.
“We want peace. I went to Armenia and I was received very well. We show them hospitality when they come here. I think it would be good for our economy and trade if the border opens,” said Ali Guvensoy, chairman of the Kars Chamber of Commerce.
That optimism is shared in landlocked Armenia. A reopening of the border would provide a huge boost to the economy, having already lost out on lucrative energy transit deals and trade with eastern Turkey.
Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan has said he expects the border to reopen by the time he attends a football match between the two countries in October.
Last year, President Abdullah Gul became the first Turkish leader to visit Armenia when he attended the first of the two World Cup qualifying ties between the two countries.
US President Barack Obama, who visited NATO ally Turkey this month, has urged Turkey to normalize ties with Armenia. The EU has said such ties would help Turkey’s bid to join the bloc.
Obama, who as a candidate labelled the killings genocide, said during his visit that he stood by his views, but said he did not want to obstruct the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement.
“I think Mr Obama and the United States must intervene and solve the problems between the two countries so the border can be opened,” Guvensoy said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS