The historic visit Turkish president Abdullah Gul paid to Armenia marked a new beginning in the relations of the two neighbouring countries that have for many decades refused to engage in any dialogue whatsoever over a bitter genocide row.

On September 6 2008, Gul visited Yerevan at the invitation of Armenian counterpart Serzh Sargsyan to watch a football World Cup qualifying match between the national teams of the two countries, which Turkey won 2-0.

According to Turkish daily Hurriyet, Gul and Sargsyan decided to improve the bilateral diplomatic ties by raising the level of the regular consulting mechanism between their states to foreign ministers, speeding up the efforts to establish a joint commission for resolving the genocide claims, forming a separate economic commission and possibly opening the closed border between them to send humanitarian aid to Armenia.

The two countries do not have diplomatic relations as a major dispute has been dividing them ever since World War One. Over 1915/17, about 1.5 million Armenians were killed in the then Ottoman Empire. Armenia has ever since requested that the massacres be labelled as genocide, something Turkey strongly opposes.

Moreover, in 1993 Turkey closed its border with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between the Armenians and the Azeri, who are a close ally of Turkey.

"We hope we will be able to demonstrate goodwill to solve the problems between our countries and not transfer them to future generations," Reuters quoted Sargsyan as saying after the meeting.

According to media reports, the two heads of state devoted much of their talks to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue but did not even mention the genocide claims. Sargsyan also spoke well of Turkey's idea of creating a Caucasus stability and co-operation platform following the war in Georgia.

"If we create a good atmosphere and climate for this process, this will be a great achievement, and will also benefit stability and co-operation in the Caucasus," Gul said, as quoted by Reuters.

During their talks, Gul invited Sargsyan to see the return football match between Turkey and Armenia that is to be held in October 2009. The two presidents will have the chance to meet much earlier, though, on the sidelines of a United Nations summit happening at the end of September.