ANCA Warns the U.S. Congress of Turkey's efforts to block decisive international action to stop Darfur Genocide.

Politifacts from the St. Peteresburg Times, which keeps track of all the promises of President Barack Obama during the campaign, added the promise to recognize the Armenian Genocide to its list. The date is April 24, when the Armenians and other governments that recognized the events in 1915 as a genocide of Armenians by the Ottoman Turkey commemorate the victims of the Armenian Genocide.

The second anniversary of a murdered journalist once again had the power to move mountains in strained relations between between Armenia and Turkey, two states separated by the biblical mount Ararat and an unholy history. When ethnic Armenian Hrant Dink was assassinated in front of the Istanbul office of the Agos Armenian weekly newspaper he edited on 19 January 2007, thousands of Turkish citizens attended his funeral chanting, “We are all Hrant Dink. We are all Armenians.”

Everything started from the point where about 200 Turkish intellectuals issued an apology to the Armenian people for the violent past. This was a major step toward the Turkish Armenian reconciliation, but the movement took pace and by now already more than 8000 in Turkey have signed the apology at www.ozurdiliyoruz.com.

In an unprecedented gesture, a group of Turkish intellectuals have publicly apologized for what they called a “great disaster” that befell the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian minority and urged their compatriots to follow suit.

It's good that the countries in South Caucasus start to realize that mutual rivary is of no benefit to anyone. It seems that Armenia and Turkey have already understood that. It's not known yet if Azerbaijan gets the message. In the news report today the head of the National Security Council of Armenia Arthur Baghdasaryan says "our neighbors are not our rivals."

Chinese privately owned carmaker Geely Auto will see its first batch of 500 sedans go on sale in Turkey in October, said xinhuanet.com today citing a Geely dealer in the country.

A great football event is expected in Yerevan tonight. The national teams of Armenia and Turkey will meet in their first-ever match within the framework of eth FIFA 2010 World Cup. The soccer match is the first in the qualification round, therefore it’s very important for Armenia.

Turkey's President Abdullah Gul has arrived in the Armenian capital for a brief landmark visit that could mark the beginning of a thaw between Yerevan and Ankara, RFE/RL's Armenian Service reports.

According to Today's Zaman the security team of the president of Turkey Abdullah Gul is actively preparing to, already a more possible, trip of Gul to Armenia for a soccer diplomacy initiated by the president of Armenia.

By all accounts, the Israeli-Syrian indirect negotiations through Turkish mediation are going well, and the fact that a fourth round of talks is scheduled for the end of July suggests that both sides expect to make further progress. The reports from Damascus and Ankara, however, indicating that Syria will not enter into direct negotiations with Israel before the advent of new American administration show an obstructive apprehension on the part of the Syrian government.

Officials in Turkey say a shootout between armed men and police officers near the U.S. consulate in Istanbul has killed three policemen and three attackers.