Tag: Armenia

In a sign of growing tensions over the frozen conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia announced it would pull out of the 2012 Eurovision song contest in Azerbaijan. The show, seen by some as a triumph of musical kitsch, was popular in Western Europe in the 1970s and '80s, and is now a big hype in Eastern Europe.

As the French Senate rushes to consider a bill that would penalise denial of the massacre of over 1 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, Turkey is lobbying to stop the effort, warning of economic consequences.

Relations between Turkey and France could be headed for a new crisis after French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged Ankara to recognise the mass killings of Armenians by the Turkish army in 1915 as genocide, the Turkish press reports.

Last week, Russia extended its lease on a military base in Armenia, a former Soviet republic, until 2044, strengthening its presence in the South Caucasus energy transit region.

"Recognition of the Armenian genocide by the full Congress and [US] President [Barack] Obama's administration would pave the way for Turkey's eventual acknowledgement of these events," writes Harout Harry Semerdjian, a foreign policy expert based in Washington, D.C. and currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford, in an exclusive op-ed for EurActiv.

On his first official visit to Turkey, EU Enlargement Commissioner Štefan Füle urged his hosts to fully normalise relations with EU member Cyprus, but heard from his interlocutors that the Cyprus issue should not affect their country's EU accession process. EurActiv Turkey reports.

The election of a Turkish member of parliament as president of the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly (PACE) triggered nervous reactions from the Kurdish, Armenian and Cypriot sides, a round-up of the international press shows.

Turkey and Armenia signed a landmark peace accord on Saturday (10 October) to restore ties and open their shared border after a century of hostility stemming from the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman forces in the First World War. But the next day a speech by Turkey's prime minister made the agreement seem problematic.

The European Union yesterday (7 May) launched a plan to foster closer political and economic ties with six former Soviet republics, while attempting to persuade Russia that it is not trying to muscle in on its sphere of influence.

Turkey and Armenia have agreed on a framework to normalise relations in a step that is the first of its kind since Turkey closed its border to Armenia in 1993.

The Georgia-Russia crisis offers Turkey "a unique chance to bolster its regional clout, check Russian and Iranian influence and help secure the flow of Western-bound oil and natural gas from former Soviet Central Asia and Azerbaijan," writes Amberin Zaman in an August analysis for the German Marshall Fund of the United States.