Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul, who was in the US to attend the NATO summit, delivered a lecture on leadership at Stanford University, and he recalled his visit to Armenia.   

Gul told the University students that a good leader must sometimes take risky steps, and noted that his risky move was his visiting Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, on the invitation of the country’s president, Star daily of Turkey informs.   

“This invitation was very important for the leaders of the countries, which do not have diplomatic relations with one another for the past twenty years and have contentious issues with each other in regard to shared history. This [visit] could have had very risky consequences in domestic and foreign politics alike.      

I am Turkey’s first president who visited Armenia. [And] Somewhat normalization of the relations between the two peoples was the expectation in return for this goodwill of mine. Our mutual visits are still symbols for normalizing relations. No matter how risky it may have been, my Yerevan visit was very correct,” Turkey’s president noted.