Armenia's Sarkisian invites Turkish president to watch football game - Hürriyet

"The president has invited Turkish President Abdullah Gul to visit Armenia on September 6 to watch the World Cup qualifying match between Armenia and Turkey," Sarkisian's spokesman, Samvel Farmanyan, told AFP.

Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic links since Ankara intensified its protests against Armenian invasion and violence in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Armenia invaded in a war with Azerbaijan in the early 1990s. The border between Turkey and Armenia has been closed.

There have been recent calls to reopen the border between ex-Soviet Armenia and Turkey to help growing trade ties between the two, which are currently conducted through third countries such as Georgia.

Armenia, with the backing of the Diaspora, claims up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in orchestrated killings in 1915. Turkey rejects the claims, saying that 300,000 Armenians along with at least as many Turks died in civil strife that emerged when the Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia.