The Iron Ladle

The Results of a study by the Trans European Policy Studies Association entitled “The Case for Opening the Turkish-Armenian Border,” was presented Wednesday to the members of the European Parliament in Brussels on the occasion of a meeting between the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee and the European Parliament Delegation to the EU-Armenia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee. The meeting, which was the first between the two delegations, was held in preparation for possible parliamentary initiatives in support of opening the border and normalizing relations between the Republics of Armenia and Turkey. The meeting was convened and chaired by Delegation Chairpersons Marie-Anne Isler Beguin (EU-Armenia PCC) and Joost Lagendijk (EU-Turkey JPC).After a presentation of the main findings of the study, Burcu Gultekin-Punsmann, Research Fellow at the Center for European Studies at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, and Nicolas Tavitian, Director of the Inside Europe Resource Center, answered the questions of the Parliamentarians. The quality of their work was acknowledged by the Chairperson Isler-Beguin, who welcomed it as a contribution to raising awareness on this sensitive issue, as well as opening new perspectives for discussion. The Study was delivered as part of the framework contract between TEPSA and the European Parliament and was coordinated by Nathalie Tocci of TEPSA’s Italian member Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome.