Turkish, Armenian NGOs look to help thaw frozen ties.
Armenian nongovernmental organizations are keen on continuing dialogue with their Turkish partners to help thaw out the countries historically frosty relations.
A conference in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, on Tuesday hosted by the Eurasia Partnership Foundation, USAID and the Yerevan Press Club inaugurated a new wave of projects to strengthen civil society interaction between Turkey and Armenia despite slow-moving normalization efforts.
“Good neighbors talk over the garden fence,” Jonathan Stark, a Eurasia Partnership Foundation board member, told the meeting on Tuesday. “This project will advance the concept of neighborly relations between Armenia and Turkey.”
The new project is expected to last until September 2012 and has a budget of nearly $2.5 million. It envisions support for cross-border peer group projects and provides an opportunity for interaction between state actors on various levels.
An Eurasia Partnership Foundation project, initially launched in January 2010, was meant to be called “The Second and Third Days of the Turkish-Armenian Rapprochement,” but unfortunately the protocols were never ratified, said Gevorg Ter-Gabrielian, director of the EPF.
Speaking of a strategic vision for NGOs after the failure of the rapprochement, Professor Mensur Akgun, director of Istanbul Kultur University’s Global Policy Center, or GPoT, said civil society groups on both sides have to be ready to approach relevant authorities and deliver their messages. “Civic organizations have to be ready to be facilitators for state actors.”
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