ANKARA: The first visit by a Turkish leader to Armenia should give momentum to help mend almost a century of hostility with the Caucasus country made more urgent since Russia’s war with Georgia.

President Abdullah Gul’s trip to Yeveran on Saturday carried huge symbolic importance for neighbours with no diplomatic ties and whose relationship is haunted by the killings of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey during World War One.

“A beautiful beginning,” Turkish newspaper Vatan said on its front page. “A hope-inspiring meeting,” said the daily Radikal.

The presidents of Turkey and Armenia held talks and watched a World Cup qualifier soccer match together during an encounter they said could help herald a new beginning in ties and aid regional security. Their foreign ministers would now work to build on what was achieved during Gul’s one-day visit.

“What has transpired (in Georgia) shows how fragile the region is and how hot the atmosphere is there,” Gul told reporters on his aircraft to Yerevan.

“As a president I am not going to sweep big problems under the carpet ... I hope this visit will create an opportunity to initiate goodwill to solve relations between Armenia and Turkey.”

No immediate breakthrough was expected but the fact Gul and his counterpart Serzh Sarksyan met despite intense domestic nationalist opposition suggested a desire to make amends.

“The Georgia war was a great cover for Turkey to move forward on Armenia,” said Hugh Pope, an author on Turkey and Central Asia and analyst for the International Crisis Group.

“Armenia really needs a way out too. It has a lot to gain.”

Turkey has never opened an embassy in Armenia and in 1993 Ankara closed their land border in a show of solidarity with Azerbaijan, a Turkic-speaking ally which was fighting Armenian-backed separatists over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Turkey hopes the conflict over Georgia’s rebel region of South Ossetia will give new impetus to solve Nagorno-Karabakh.

If Turkey and Armenia can move beyond the symbolism to re-establish normal relations, that could have huge significance for Turkey’s role as a regional power, for energy flows from the Caspian Sea and for Western influence in the South Caucasus region. Better ties would also boost Ankara’s EU membership bid. France, for instance, has raised concerns about a border dispute between Turkey and smaller Armenia.

Russia’s decision last month to send its forces into Georgia, an ex-Soviet state which borders both Armenia and Turkey convinced many that it was time for Ankara and Yerevan to put their differences aside.

“Turkey has wanted to make friends with its neighbours and the governing AK Party’s philosophy is clearly different from the old Turkish republican philosophy. It has a more flexible view on minorities and is not so categorical on what are the good and bad guys,” said Pope.

Landlocked Armenia could also derive enormous benefits from the opening of the frontier with its large neighbour and the restoration of a rail link.

Western-backed pipelines shipping oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast bypass Armenia and bend north instead to go through Georgia. With that route looking vulnerable after the Russian intervention, Armenia could be an attractive alternative.

Ties between Ankara and Yerevan are strained over Armenia’s claim, supported by many western historians, that up to 1.5 million of its people were killed in a genocide. Turkey denies there was genocide and says the deaths were the result of inter-ethnic conflict that also killed many Muslim Turks.

Gul’s visit could give fodder to pro-Turkey US politicians who are lobbying Congress not to pass a resolution calling the mass killings of Armenians genocide, analysts said. The circumstances of the killing of Armenians is a highly sensitive issue for both Turkey and Armenia. Asserting that there was an Armenian genocide is still a crime in Turkey.

But Gul told reporters on his plane back to Ankara that during his talks with Sarksyan, there was no mention or even hint of the issue, a sign Turkish diplomats said the emotive issue no longer held monopoly over relations.

“Each side recognises that to move forward each side has had to break out of their old positions,” said a senior Turkish diplomat, who declined to be named. “Too much is at stake and we are still at an early stage here.”

The challenges remain daunting.—Reuters