Armenia, Armenia

It was trivialised as "football diplomacy" as the respective heads of state from Yerevan and Ankara exchanged reciprocal visits to watch their teams play each other, but there could be no doubt that the two countries made genuine progress in 2009 on resolving deep disputes.

Against this background, Turkey was severely irked by episodes in foreign capitals about an issue that just will not go away: the Armenian genocide. Between 1915 and 1923, about 1.5 million Armenians died in conflicts in the region, in what Turkey insists was a part of civil warfare but which Armenia and many others describe as a genocide.

Approval by the foreign affairs committee of the US house of representatives, followed by Sweden’s parliament soon afterwards, of resolutions on the Armenian genocide saw Ankara withdraw its respective ambassadors from the two capitals, and Erdogan cancelled a planned official visit to Sweden that had been scheduled for March 17.

Armenia welcomed the resolution by the US committee, but Ankara insists that such resolutions will bedevil efforts to normalise bilateral relations with Yerevan.

Media matters
Turkey has come in for criticism time and again for restrictions on freedom of the media, with one of the most high-profile cases being the tax penalties against the Dogan media group, which followed media reports by Dogan publications about government corruption.

Watchdogs have upbraided Turkey on a number of occasions, and when Erdogan made a speech in which he appeared to blame the media for economic indicators weakening amid domestic political turbulence, concern deepened.

"Nobody has a right to increase tension in this country," Erdogan was quoted by the Voice of America as saying. "I cannot let such newspaper articles upset financial balances. We won’t allow it…don’t say tomorrow you haven’t been warned". Later, he said that he had been misunderstood and had not threatened the media.

VOA quoted Richard Howitt, a member of the European Parliament’s committee on Turkey, as saying: "I still really worry about freedom of expression, and part of Turkey conforming to European values, is to relax and to become much more confident in allowing dissident and opposing political views. However offensive they may be, it is part of being a modern European democratic pluralistic country and that’s a lesson I still think that has a long way to go in Turkey itself," Howitt said.