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YEREVAN: Turkey's President Abdullah Gul makes an historic trip to Armenia on Saturday to watch a football match and try to tackle decades of animosity between the estranged neighbours.
Gul will meet with Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian before the World Cup qualifier between Armenia and Turkey that is scheduled to begin at 9:00 pm (1600 GMT).
Under attack from the opposition at home, Gul only publicly accepted Sarkisian's invitation this week to attend the match and become the first Turkish head of state to visit Armenia.
The two countries have no diplomatic relations and have waged a bitter international diplomatic battle over Armenia's attempts to have massacres of their people under the Ottoman Empire classified as genocide.
Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their people were killed in orchestrated massacres during World War I as the Ottoman Empire fell apart.
Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that 300,000-500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided with invading Russian troops.
The trip will only last a few hours, but Gul and Sarkisian are expected to hold talks on Turkey's proposal for a Caucasus regional security forum, trying to avoid contentious bilateral problems, according to diplomatic sources.
Experts in both countries have stressed that this is just a cautious first step.
"The Turkish president's visit to Armenia is of huge importance," said Yerevan-based political analyst Sergei Shakariants.
"But it is impossible to expect that a first meeting will be enough to resolve problems that have endured for centuries. This meeting is a simple first contact," he said.
"Gul's visit is a bold move, but one should not expect much from it," said Cengiz Aktar, an international affairs expert at Istanbul's Bahcesehir University.
"First of all, there is no a real desire in Turkey to make peace with Armenia and the atmosphere is not suitable for ground-breaking moves."
The Turkish government has adopted a cautious tone.
"The facts that we have do not support the theory that the visit will resolve all the problems, but it is not right to assume that nothing will come of it either," State Minister Mehmet Aydin was quoted by the Anatolia news agency as saying.
Some Turkish fans began to arrive Friday for the match, including student Pinar Akpinar, a member of the "Young Civilians", a pro-democracy movement that called for Turkey's closed border with Armenia to be reopened for the match.
"The invitation by the Armenian president to Mr Gul is a very positive development. We want to have normal relations with our neighbours," Akpinar said. "We think that we can overcome this question, that the two people can together find a solution.... The people of the two countries must assume their responsibilities and work together to put an end to this animosity."
Turkey has refused to establish diplomatic ties with Armenia since the former Soviet republic gained independence in 1991.
In 1993, Turkey also shut its border with Armenia in a show of solidarity with its close ally Azerbaijan, then at war with Armenia over Nagorny Karabakh, an Armenian-majority region in Azerbaijan which declared independence.
The move dealt a heavy blow to Armenia, an impoverished nation sandwiched between Turkey and Azerbaijan in the strategic Caucasus.
- AFP/so
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