It was a football game that could set the ball rolling to resolve one of history's most bitter enmities.

In an unprecedented visit for two countries divided by the legacy of the 20th century's first genocide, the presidents of Turkey and Armenia sat together in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, to watch their national teams play a World Cup qualifying match.

Turkey's national anthem was almost drowned out by booing from 35,000 Armenian fans at the Hrazdan Stadium, where Abdullah Gül and Serzh Sargsyan watched the game from behind bullet-proof glass. Turkey won 2-0, but the smiles and handshakes between the presidents showed that they believed “football diplomacy” had achieved the most important result.

“I was happy to see that we were unanimous with the Armenian side on the need for mutual dialogue to remove barriers to improving bilateral ties. I underlined that there is no problem that dialogue cannot solve,” President Gül said after the two held talks.

President Sargsyan said that there was a “political will to decide the questions between our countries, so that these problems are not passed on to the next generation”. He has been invited to Ankara to watch the return match next year.

There is a lot to discuss. Turkey refused to establish diplomatic relations after the collapse of the Soviet Union because of Armenia's campaign for international recognition of what it calls the Turkish genocide of Armenians at the beginning of the 20th century. Yerevan repeatedly said that it was ready to establish relations without preconditions.

Compounding a sense of historical injury, Armenia's national symbol, Mount Ararat, towers over Yerevan just beyond the Turkish border. Turkey closed the border between the two countries in 1993 as a gesture of support for Azerbaijan in its war with Armenia over the separatist enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Turkey insists that there was no genocide, although a growing number of countries have backed Armenian claims.

Ankara says that up to half a million Armenians and a similar number of Turks died in civil conflict as Russian troops invaded the crumbling Ottoman Empire from the east.

Hundreds of Armenian protesters held up banners demanding “Turkey admit your guilt” and “1915 never again” as President Gül's motorcade travelled from the airport into Yerevan for the game on Saturday.

The visit also brought a stream of Turkish journalists and television crews to Yerevan's Genocide Museum, next to a memorial to the victims on a hill overlooking the football stadium. Hayk Demoyan, the museum's director, told The Times that many Turks were confronting this history for the first time because school textbooks made no mention of it.

“You can see the shock on their faces at this lack of knowledge. It is a very painful process for Turkey to open up its history that has been censored for years,” he said.

Mr Demoyan admitted that he had been shocked to see the Turkish flag flying over the stadium after so many decades of hostility. But he welcomed Mr Sargsyan's invitation to Mr Gül as an opportunity to forge new relations.

“He is the first Turkish leader to visit Yerevan, even the Ottoman Sultans never came,” he said. “We have to have diplomatic relations and history. Nobody can make us forget, memory is not something that can be traded.”

Most Armenians seemed to support that view. An open border would also boost landlocked Armenia's economy, which depends on Georgia, embroiled in conflict with Russia, and Iran for access to the outside world.

Mr Gül sounded optimistic on the flight back to Ankara saying: “I believe my visit has demolished a psychological barrier in the Caucasus.”

Contentious history

— Between 1915 and 1923, the Ottoman Empire’s “Young Turk” Government allegedly set about exterminating the two million Turkish Armenians, who had been seeking greater independence

— Many of the deaths took place as Ottoman forces were fighting Imperial Russia during the First World War

— By 1923 a total of 1.5 million Armenians are believed to have perished in massacres, on death marches and in concentration camps set up in the desert on the Syrian border

— April 24 is the day when Armenian communities worldwide commemorate the genocide. It was on this date in 1915 that 200 Armenian leaders in Constantinople were rounded up and executed

— Turkey rejects the allegation of genocide. It maintains that Armenians and Turks died during civil strife in the context of Wthe First World War and that the state had no role in planning mass extermination

Sources: Armenian National Institute, Times Archives

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