| Ankara yesterday set aside its deep political differences with neighboring Armenia to extend sympathy over the tragic death of Armenian citizens in a jet crash.
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul sent a message to his Armenian counterpart Vartan Oskanian and expressed sincere condolences to relatives of Armenian citizens killed in the crash, The New Anatolian learned.
Turkey and Armenia do not have diplomatic relations and the two countries are at odds over the Armenian claims of genocide. The Armenian diaspora accuses the Ottoman Empire of deliberately massacring up to 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1919. Turkey stresses that these figures are inflated and says that far fewer Armenians died, due to civil unrest under the conditions of World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Ankara suspended its diplomatic relations with Yerevan a decade ago due to Armenian occupation of the Azeri territories of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Turkish sources confirmed to The New Anatolian yesterday that Gul’s message of condolence to Oskanian would be sent to Yerevan through diplomatic channels. They didn’t provide any more details.
Last year, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent a letter to Armenian President Robert Kocharian suggesting putting an end to the dispute over genocide claims through a joint study of Turkish and Armenian scholars. But the Armenian president turned down the suggestion, asking first that Ankara revive diplomatic relations and discuss all issues of concern on an intergovernmental platform. At that time, the messages were sent through the embassies of both countries in neighboring Georgia.
Clash leaves 113 dead
A total of 113 people are dead after an Armenian-owned Airbus plunged into the Black Sea in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
According to the report by RIA Novosti news agency, the A-320 passenger jet, which was flying from Yerevan to an airport servicing the popular Russian resort of Sochi, disappeared from radar screens at 2:15 a.m. local time (Tuesday, 10:15 p.m. GMT).
Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said that the most likely cause of the crash was bad weather — the Armavia Airlines plane had reportedly been trying to make its second landing attempt in heavy rain — and an expert with Russia’s Air Traffic Organization concurred that poor visibility may have caused the accident.
“These were the actual weather conditions at the moment of the crash: the lowest level of cloud lay at 100 meters, visibility was at four kilometers, and it was raining heavily,” the expert said.
Prosecutors ruled out the possibility of a terrorist attack and a representative of the Interior Ministry in the southern Krasnodar Territory said investigators were considering three possibilities.
“We are considering several versions: a mistake made by the pilot, a technical malfunction or a mistake by air traffic controllers,” Igor Zhukov of the North Caucasus transport police said.
However, Artyom Movsisyan, the head of Armenia’s main civil aviation department, ruled out the possibility of a technical error. He said the A-320 had undergone a complete technical overhaul last month and experts from Sabina Technics had given a positive report on its technical condition shortly before takeoff.
Movsisyan said the plane had been filled with 10 metric tons of fuel and a flight to Sochi lasting less than an hour needed only 3.5 tons. |
Akgün Medya