Turkey urged its football fans Tuesday to show respect when Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian attends a game marking a symbolic step in their countries' reconciliation effort. The brief visit on Wednesday will see Sarkisian join his counterpart Abdullah Gul to watch the second leg of a World Cup qualifier between Turkey and Armenia in the north-western city of Bursa.
The match comes days after Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers signed landmark deals to establish diplomatic ties and open their shared border, in an internationally hailed step towards ending a century of hostility over the World War I-era massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks.
Turkey is eager to ensure that nothing overshadows the Armenian leader's visit, which comes after Gul watched the first-leg match in Yerevan last year, giving impetus to the rapprochement process. Turkey won that match 2-0. In a public appeal on Tuesday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Turkish football fans to show hospitality and not give in to possible provocations.
"Our president was greeted with hospitality in Armenia... We should host Sarkisian and the Armenian team in the same manner as befits Turkish hospitality," he told a meeting of his party's lawmakers here. "I am confident that football lovers in Bursa will act with dignity and maturity," he added. Gul himself held a meeting with Bursa authorities and leaders of football fan groups last week in which he personally appealed for a smooth match.
"We want to show the world a lesson in hospitality. I wish this match to be an example to world peace," Gul said in the meeting, according to an official statement. Sarkisian and Gul are expected to hold face-to-face talks and have dinner together before watching the match, along with UEFA President Michel Platini, the head of European football.
The two leaders will then attend a reception before Sarkisian flies back home. Local authorities have said that some 3,000 police officers will be on duty in Bursa on Wednesday and announced a set of strict rules for fans going to the match. Bursa governor Sahabettin Harput said last week that only Turkish and Armenian flags would be allowed into the stadium, but, in a change of heart on Tuesday, said authorities would also permit Azeri flags.
The reversal came after a local association promoting stronger ties with Azerbaijan distributed thousands of Azeri flags earlier this week for spectators to fly during the match. Plain clothes security officers will also take their place in the stands in order to stop fans from shouting any anti-Armenian slogans, Harput said.
Azerbaijan, which has strong ethnic, trade and energy links to Turkey, has strongly objected to Ankara normalising ties with Yerevan and opening the border before the resolution of Baku's conflict with Yerevan over Nagorny-Karabakh. In 1993, Turkey closed its border with Armenian to back Azerbaijan against Yerevan and its support for Armenian separatists in Nagorny-Karabakh which broke free from Baku after a bloody war in the 1990s.
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