Turkey handily won its September 6 World Cup qualifying match against Armenia. But for many the 2-0 final score was not as important as the game's diplomatic outcome. The match appears to have catalyzed an effort to normalize bilateral relations.
A football match could possibly give a kick-start to efforts by Armenia and Turkey to normalize relations. On September 6, Turkish President Abdullah Gul will travel to Yerevan to watch a 2010 World Cup qualifying soccer match between Armenia and Turkey, thus becoming the first Turkish leader to visit Armenia.
In a move that could very well hamper rather than promote political reconciliation in Armenia, the country's leading opposition politician, Levon Ter-Petrosian, is mounting a campaign to have former president Robert Kocharian tried for "heavy crimes" against the Armenian people.
Armenian leaders have pledged that they will wage an all-out fight against corruption, but some observers doubt how far that fight can actually go, and to what extent politics drives the campaign.
With cries of "Fight, fight till the end!" supporters of ex-President Levon Ter-Petrosian on June 20 held their first large-scale public demonstration in Yerevan since the violence of March 1 that left ten people dead.
Plans for a large-scale opposition rally on June 20 are sparking concerns about the likelihood of fresh violence on the eve of a critical vote in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe about Armenia's efforts to reverse the effects of its March 1 crackdown on opposition protestors.
They may still hate each other, but political necessity is pressuring two arch foes in Armenian politics, President Serzh Sarkisian and opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosian, to start talking to each other. Even so, significant obstacles stand in the way of the start of a substantive political dialogue.
While striving to repair the rift created by the March 1 political violence in Yerevan, Armenia's new government is confronting a new challenge over rising natural gas prices.
In his first press conference as prime minister, Tigran Sarkisian announced on April 18 that the government will lift natural gas subsidies beginning May 1, meaning retail gas prices will increase from the curren
As Armenia's new government takes shape, domestic attention is focusing on how the administration headed by newly inaugurated President Serzh Sarkisian will put to rest lingering tension from the March 1 clash between police and opposition supporters. For now, no clear policy trends have emerged.
With less than a week to go before Armenia's presidential inauguration, attention is riveted on whether a new administration will be able to foster a truce in the ongoing political battle between the country's opposition and government.
