Rakel Dink, the wife of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink who was assassinated in 2007 outside the office of his Agos newspaper, has said it’s important for Turks and Armenians to overcome all types of boundaries that imprison people, in a conference about the future of the Turkey-Armenia border which has been closed since 1993, Today’s Zaman reports.
In the two-day conference, which was organized by the Hrant Dink Foundation and Ankara University’s Economics Department of the Faculty of Political Sciences, the history of the closed border between Turkey and Armenia and the normalization of Turkish-Armenian ties were discussed.
“Door Sealed: The Conference on the Future of Turkish-Armenian Border” was held at a venue provided by the Ankara University in early November.
Rakel Dink, one of the board members of the Hrant Dink Foundation said in her opening remarks at the conference, “We want to overcome all types of boundaries that imprison people and draws people away from conscience.”
Ankara University professor of political sciences, Onur Özsoy, made a speech titled, “Opening the Border in the Name of Peace and Stability.” During the conference, the situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh region and its role as an obstacle for normalizing the ties between Turkey and Armenia was discussed.
Author of the book “Karabağ” (Nagorno-Karabakh) and specialist in Caucasian issues at the US-based think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Thomas De Waal, was among the attendees of the conference.
De Waal said that the Nagorno-Karabakh problem is the reason for the closed border between Turkey and Armenia and that it’s not a frozen issue. He said, on the contrary, it is an issue over which people still lose their lives.
