Turkey, Azerbaijan reaffirm commitment to alliance
ANKARA. June 23. KAZINFORM The foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Turkey met in İstanbul on Sunday evening for an unofficial meeting, during which they reaffirmed the neighboring countries' understanding of "one nation, two states"; Kazinform cites Today's Zaman.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and his Azerbaijani counterpart, Elmar Mammadyarov, were together for a one-and-a-half-hour dinner at a restaurant as the latter stopped in İstanbul before returning to Baku after a visit to Japan.
After decades of hostility, Turkey and Armenia announced in April a "roadmap" for re-establishing diplomatic relations and opening their shared border. But Ankara's ally Azerbaijan said Armenia should first leave Nagorno-Karabakh, a mostly ethnic Armenian enclave that broke away after fighting a bloody war with Azerbaijan in the 1990s and claims independence. Turkey then offered support for the Azerbaijani position, complicating further progress in talks with Armenia.
Davutoğlu was reminded of remarks by his Armenian counterpart, Edward Nalbandian, who had said Yerevan expects Ankara to take new steps for the normalization of bilateral ties and was asked to elaborate on those possible steps; Kazinform refers to Today's Zaman.
See www.todayszaman.com for full version.