20 February 2010 / ,
When the Turkish government signed a deal with Armenia last October, it looked like a clear achievement for its policy of “zero problems” with its neighbors.
The old foes agreed to establish relations and open their common border, which had been sealed by the Turks in 1993 in solidarity with Azerbaijan, during its nasty war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mainly Armenian enclave. The deal offered the hope of burying the ghosts of the past by setting up a joint committee of historians to investigate the mass slaughter of Ottoman Armenians in 1915. But ancient enmities are not so easily cast off. Just a day after the deal was signed, Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said that it could not be implemented until Armenia withdrew from Nagorno-Karabakh, which it has occupied since the war. No matter that the agreement made no mention of the conflict.
