On this April 24, I have come from Armenia where I live and whose citizen I am, through Syria where I was born, to Lebanon where I’ve always felt at home, to say this.

All of us together live in an interdependent world and we should act like it.
All countries live in a global community and we should all sustain it.
All neighbors should cross borders to build cooperation and understanding, not close them and fuel hostility and fear.

Turkey, sadly, seems to be falling into that worst of all diplomatic habits of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity. But this failure of will and vision is only breeding greater regional instability.

In the two weeks before US President Barack Obama’s recent visit to Turkey, there was almost universal optimism that Turkey would open its border with Armenia. But Obama came and went, and the border remained closed.

In My Grandmother (Verso Books, 2008) Fethiye Cetin recounts the life of her grandmother, and mine. Sort of. It turns out we were the cousins divided at birth.

A young girl, living in Anatolia, Eastern Turkey, separated, violently, from parents at an age too young to remember. That’s the story of her grandmother. That’s the story of my grandmother, too. Neither had schooling. Neither had a profession, other than grandmother.

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan's recent invitation to Turkish President Abdullah Gul to visit Yerevan to watch the FIFA football match together was historic. Given the two countries' long-strained relations, this visit would have been remarkable at any time. But coming as it does only one month after the alarming Russian-Georgian confrontation, it may offer real hope that tensions in the volatile Caucasus region can be eased.