Seattle Photographer Daniel Sheehan

Turkish and Armenian Rapprochement: A Region Grows Up

Given the players and the history, a deal is still a long shot. But that traditional antagonists Armenia and Turkey have continued their talks this far — at least by appearances, they are within three days of an accord re-establishing diplomatic relations and opening their borders — is already a sign of an until-now missing maturity in the deeply suspicious region.

The main flashpoint between the two countries has been Turkey’s 1915 massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians. Turkey refuses to acknowledge responsibility for the carnage, and permits pseudo-scholarly denials of the well-establish history itself. A second issue is the two-decade-long dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the status of the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkey, which supports Azerbaijan in the dispute, has insisted that the issue be settled as part of the rapprochement with Armenia.

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