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[Photo of the week]
Cornered between Yerevan and Baku, Turkey tries to comfort Azerbaijan
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On Wednesday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan paid a visit to Baku to put strained relations with Azerbaijan back on track after the country's increasing uneasiness over the prospect of Turkey-Armenia rapprochement without Armenia ending its occupation of Azerbaijani territory.
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During his visit, Erdoğan gave firm and clear assurances to the regional ally that Turkey would not open its closed border with Armenia unless the Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani territory ended. “There is a relation of cause and effect here. The occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh is a cause, and the closure of the border is an effect. Without the occupation ending, the gate will not be opened,” Erdoğan said at a joint press conference with Azerbaijani President İlham Aliyev during a visit to Baku. Aliyev, who refused to attend an Alliance of Civilizations meeting in İstanbul in April in protest of Turkish-Armenian reconciliation efforts, said he was grateful for Erdoğan's statement. “There could be no clearer answer than this. There is no longer any doubt,” Aliyev said. Aliyev said that concerns grew in his country when there was no response from Turkey to reports in the Armenian media that the border would be reopened. In an address to the Azerbaijani parliament later in the day, Erdoğan appealed to the Azerbaijani people to trust his words rather than media speculation.
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