Last week the Taraf newspaper wrote that the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was planning to re-open the border with Armenia in September this year. The Turkish Foreign Ministry has denied this information. The boundary between the two countries was closed in 1993 due to the occupation of Azerbaijani territories by Armenia. The Foreign Ministry stresed that only after the withdrawal of Armenian troops from Nagorno Karabakh the border can be reopened.
A political scientist, assistant professor at the Kirşehir University, Kurshat Zorlu told in an interview to Vestnik Kavkaza that "one should not expect the opening of borders in the near future because the Nagorno-Karabakh issue has a special place in the Turkish foreign policy."
"I think that these rumors are spread on prurpose by certain forces in order to make Azerbaijan and Turkey fight against each other," he said.
An associate professor at the School of International Relations of the University of Economics and Technology (Ankara) Togrul Ismail said that the article was a result of Turkey's attempts to normalize its relations with Armenia.
The expert stressed that normalizing its relations with Yerevan, Ankara does not intend to change its position on Nagorno-Karabakh.
