USAN WELCOMES THE OBAMA-ERDOGAN TALKS, CONTENT WITH THE ANNOUNCED RESULTS
Washington, December 8 (AZERTAC). The Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office of the White House. Their ambitious agenda included many items of interest, including energy security and the role of the Turkic countries such as Azerbaijan in contributing to that. However, the item of most interest to our community was on the subject of the opening of the land border between Armenia and Turkey.
President Obama remarked: “I also congratulated the Prime Minister on some courageous steps that he has taken around the issue of normalizing Turkish/Armenian relations, and encouraged him to continue to move forward along this path.”
In turn, Prime Minister Erdogan said the following through the translator: “We have also discussed relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which is of great importance. This is important in the context of Turkish-Armenian relations. We have discussed the Minsk Group and what the Minsk Group can do - the United States, Russia, and France - to add more impetus to that process. I can say that to have more impetus in the Minsk process is going to have a very positive impact on the overall process, because the normalization process between Turkey and Armenia is very much related to these issues. As the administration in Turkey, we are determined to move forward in this area.”
The U.S. Azeris Network (USAN) is content with the public remarks and results of the talks between the two leaders, because they re-emphasize the historic and umbilical link between the symbolism of the opening of the land border between Armenia and Turkey (the air border between the two nations has been open since 1995, regular air flights have been in effect since 2002), and the need for Armenian military withdrawal from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
It was precisely because of Armenia`s military occupation of 16% of Azerbaijan and the ethnic cleansing of some 800,000 Azerbaijanis from their homeland in 1991-1994, culminating in the occupation of Kelbajar region in April 1993, that the Republic of Turkey, complying with several UN Security Council resolutions and OSCE decisions dealing with Armenian occupation and military aggression, closed its border with Armenia. That was primarily done to restrict the flow fuel, materiel, provisions and dual-use technology, as well as inflow of mercenaries from abroad, into Armenia, which was then used to enlarge and solidify its aggression and occupation campaign in Azerbaijan. Turkish action saved countless Azerbaijani lives, and made an important precedent in the penalizing a nation that broke all international laws and chose military aggression and occupation as the way to develop.
Today, with Armenia desperately wanting to open the border to have even a marginal boost in its arrested development - which is due to the fact that instead of developing its post-Soviet economy and social services, it has to maintain a disproportionally large occupational military force against the economically and militarily rising Azerbaijan - these talks and negotiations present a unique chance for the international community, particularly Turkey and the U.S., to bring the OSCE Minsk Group peace negotiations, that are going on since 1992, between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, to a successful fruition. Land border opening is offered as an additional carrot to intransigent Armenia to become a responsible member of the international community and cease its occupation. The USAN supports such a sequential course of action and calls on:
1) Armenia to comply with the four (4) outstanding UN Security Council resolutions from 1993;
2) the Armenian Diaspora and its lobby and advocacy organizations to stop being an impediment to the peace and prosperity in the South Caucasus;
3) regional powers to more strongly support the sequential course of actions (i.e., border in exchange for military withdrawal);
4) Turkey for continued coordination of actions with Azerbaijan, and fending off pressure to open the border unilaterally;
5) United States for using its unique influence to compel Armenia and the Armenian Diaspora to view this sequential course of action as a necessity primarily for Armenia and Armenians, as it is in full interest of the Armenian nation.
Furthermore, the USAN notes that President Sargsyan of Armenia has proven in March 2008 and more recently during the international tour to persuade the Armenian Diaspora of the need to sign and ratify the two protocols with Turkey, that he is in full control of Armenia and is perfectly able to bring this course of action to the successful end that would satisfy Turkey, Azerbaijan, the United States and all other responsible stakeholders.
The U.S. Azeris Network (USAN) <http://www.usazeris.org/> is a registered non-profit, non-partisan, non-sectarian genuine grassroots advocacy and voter education network that is facilitating political activism and efforts by the Azerbaijani-Americans and other Turkic-Americans and their associations, organizations, councils, conferences, and other formal, semi-formal and informal groups, on federal, state and local levels. USAN is the first nationwide grassroots organization uniting Azerbaijani-Americans, being created by the grassroots, for the grassroots.
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