Turkey ready to discuss diplomatic ties with Armenia

(AVIGNON) - Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said diplomatic ties would be discussed during his historic trip to Armenia to watch a football match Saturday but warned against raising expectations.

Babacan and Turkish President Abdullah Gul were to begin their landmark visit to Yerevan, with which Turkey has no diplomatic relations, later in the day.

The football diplomacy is a significant move for two countries that have waged a bitter diplomatic battle over Armenia's attempts to have massacres of their people under the Ottoman Empire classified as genocide.

Babacan and Gul were due to land in the Armenian capital at 1200 GMT and meet Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian before the World Cup qualifier between Armenia and Turkey that is scheduled to begin at 1600 GMT.

It would be the first visit by a Turkish president since the former Soviet republic gained its independence in 1991.

"We don't have any diplomatic relations right now with the Armenians. What are we going to do about this? (It's) another area of discussion," for the Yerevan talks, Babacan told journalists late Friday on the sidelines of an EU foreign ministers' meeting at Avignon, southern France.

"I don't think we should raise expectations that high," for the negotiations, he added.

"But on the other hand, when we open the doors for dialogue that means we are ready to talk about the problems."

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their people were killed between 1915 and 1917 in orchestrated massacres during World War I as the Ottoman Empire fell apart -- a claim supported by several other countries.

Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that 300,000-500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided with invading Russian troops.

The rapprochement is an indirect result of the Georgia-Russia conflict, which Babacan described as an "alarming" scenario.

The fighting in neighbouring Georgia "showed we need to come up with a fresh approach to resolution of conflict in the Caucasus," he said, and that meant including Armenia.

He said that while problems remained in the region Turkey's "vision" was to turn recent events "into an opportunity for lasting peace and stability."

Ankara had thus proposed the setting up of a "Caucasus platform for stability and cooperation" embracing Georgia, Russia, Armenia and the rest of the region in an informal grouping to discuss the gamut of issues.

The minister rejected Turkish opposition criticism of the rapprochement with Armenia saying it was time for "more open views."

On the events of 1915 Babacan said Turkey had opened its files and proposed a joint historic commission to investigate.

"History should be written by experts, by historians, history should not be decided by politicians," he said.

Before heading to Armenia, Babacan was taking part in a meeting with the foreign ministers of the European Union, of which Turkey is a candidate nation.

"When we look at the map of the Caucasus, we also see Armenia," said Babacan The Turkish minister said it was sheer luck the two countries were picked to play each other, but that "then it turned out to be a good opportunity, so to say, to start discussing directly the issues we have."

He declined to try and predict the result.