Goran Lennmarker: "Turkey should overcome its past, accepting the fact of "genocide of Armenians", and join the European Union"

Armenia has a historical chance to help Turkey become a modern European country, said Goran Lennmarker, special representative of the chairman of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly on Karabakh conflict and special rapporteur on the situation in Georgia and South Ossetia, while meeting with speaker of Armenian parliament Tigran Torosyan.

Lennmarker appreciated Armenia's policy in the region, noting that he expects progress in the Armenian-Turkish relations following the visit of Turkish President Abdullah Gul to Yerevan to watch the Armenia-Turkey football match.

"Armenia has a historical chance to help Turkey, where powerful forces want to turn it into a modern European country, but face problems in this issue", sources in the public policy department of the Armenian parliament reported with reference to Lennmarker.

He said Turkey, which is a Muslim country, often do not separate state and religion, while the working government, whose members are religious people, wants it, which is important in the sense of closing to the European policy.

"Turkey should overcome its past, accepting the fact of "genocide of Armenians", and become EU member, when the country will have the standards, generally approved in the EU members, including protected human rights, democracy, absence of corruption", said OSCE Parliamentary Assembly representative.

Goran Lennmarker stressed importance of establishing Armenian-Turkish relations. He said the first step for it should become the opening of the border between the two countries, blocked by Turkey unilaterally.

He noted that normalization of the Armenian-Turkish relations may have a psychological influence of Turkey which will not allow nationalistic powers to occupy a dominating position and enable Turkey to become a really European country.

The Armenian speaker in turn noted that Armenia always stressed readiness to establish relations without preconditions, yet Turkey sets some provisions.

"Nevertheless, it is now necessary to eye the future with hope. There are serious clashes of interests of different countries in the region, yet the regional countries should display interest in cooperation for establishing peace, security and welfare", noted Torosyan.

/Novosti-Armenia/