Azerbaijanis split over Turkish president's Yerevan visit

“During discussions, there are sharp opposers and supporters of Turkish President’s visit to Armenia,” the head of the Working Group, MP Nizami Jafarov, told TrendNews.

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan invited Gul to Armenia to watch together the 2010 World Cup qualifying round game between the two countries national teams on Sept. 6 to mark "a new symbolic start in the countries' relations".�

Gul's close circles and recent reports claim the Turkish president would accept the invitation and travel to Yerevan to watch the game. But Turkish officials have refrained from revealing the final decision until the last moment.

If Gul visits Yerevan, Turkey, which has no established diplomatic relations with its neighbor Armenia, therefore would have formal contact at the presidential level on the occasion of the football match.

The public of Azerbaijan attentively follows whether Turkey will accept the invitation extended by Armenia, TrendNews reported.

Turkey is among the first countries that recognized Armenia when it declared its independency. However there is no diplomatic relations between the two countries, as Armenia presses the international community to admit the so-called "genocide" claims instead of accepting Turkey's call to investigate the allegations, and its invasion of 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory despite U.N. Security Council resolutions on the issue.

Jafarov said any change in either Azerbaijan or Turkey’s attitude towards these or other questions can not change the relations between Turkey and Azerbaijan, the Azeri news agency reported. He added it deals with the tactical change in Turkey’s attitude towards the Armenian problem.

The Azeri MP said the whole world is concerned by the non-solution on the Armenian problem for such authoritative countries as Turkey and Azerbaijan, and added that therefore such accelerative attempts may be made.

“The development of events shows that the Turkish president’s taking such a step in the attitude towards Armenia is a tactical move. This does not change its attitude towards Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan will not change its attitude towards Turkey due to such a step. The matter is that a new period has already begun in the attitude towards the Armenian issue. This is Turkey’s initial steps. But I think that it is impossible to make claims that with this, Turkey will make concessions to Armenia, change its policy, implement dictate of great forces,” Jafarov said.

The MP does not believe that in the present condition, Turkey will pursue a policy strengthening Armenia because Armenia’s attitude towards Turkey is clear, according to TrendNews. Turkey can not take revenge in the face of Armenia’s aggression, Jafarov told the agency.