EU envoy says Turkey takes "tactical step backwards" on Armenia thaw

"A step back was taken by the Turkish side ... but this is not a U-turn," EU South Caucasus envoy Peter Semneby said in the interview conducted at the end of a visit to Moscow last week.

"We expect the conversations will continue," Semneby said.

Ankara and Yerevan agreed in April on a "road map" deal for U.S.-backed talks that could lead to the normalizing of ties and the opening of their border, which Turkey closed in a show of support to Azerbaijan in 1993 after Armenian occupation of Azeri territories in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Turkish officials, however, have said Turkey will not open its border with Armenia before the neighboring country ends its occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh, reassuring Azeri leaders that Ankara's efforts to reconcile with Yerevan would not undermine the country's interests.

Reconciliation talks with Yerevan, conducted before the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, also faced fierce criticism from the opposition parties and a number of political analysts in the country.

Semneby said it was important the "pause" in the peace process between Turkey and Armenia did not last too long because of the risk that impetus would be lost.

"The normalization (with Armenia) became the subject of quite widespread and heated discussion in Turkey," he added in earlier remarks to a small group of reporters. "It seems to me, this discussion became more heated than was expected," Reuters quoted him as saying.

"I see this as a Turkish tactical step backwards," Semneby said. "But fundamentally, the new foreign policy that has been pursued by the Erdogan government, I don't see that this policy is changing," he added.

AZERI-ARMENIAN TALKS
The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia began in 1988 on Armenian territorial claims over Azerbaijan. Since 1992, Armenian Armed Forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and its seven surrounding districts -- a frozen conflict legacy of the Soviet Union.

Both countries continue with fruitless peace negotiations. The OSCE Minsk Group, set up in 1992 and co-chaired by the United States, Russia, and France, is engaged in efforts to resolve the conflict peacefully.
Semneby, however, believes real progress is being made.

"It is clear that if you look at the negotiating process, it is intensifying," he told Reuters. "We had in a month two meetings and there will be another relatively soon between the presidents."

Armed clashes still occur regularly along the lines separating Azeri and Armenian troops. Asked about the risk of conflict, Semneby said it would be foolish to neglect it but he felt both sides understood the enormous costs which would be involved in any large-scale military engagement.

"Even with this very dangerous posturing that we see sometimes and the fact that the forces are not separated and there are incidents all the time, the two sides are by now used to managing incidents," he said.

"If anything, the Georgia war (last year with Russia), demonstrated the risks of military engagement ... it was also a wake-up call to both countries how vulnerable they are."