While world leaders recalled the deportation and mass murder of Ottoman Armenians a century ago that many define as genocide, others recalled on or about April 24 a lost opportunity that could have been the start of a reconciliation between Turks and Armenians: the “football diplomacy” that began between Ankara and Yerevan in 2008, and subsequent “protocols” the two capitals signed in Zurich in October 2009.

Had that “Armenian opening” worked out, Turkey and Armenia would have an open border and diplomatic relations. Moreover, there could even be some convergence in the two nation’s utterly opposite perceptions of history.

That “Armenian opening” had failed, however, like several other openings, or olive branches, that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government promised to offer in its moderate pre-2011 era. (For example, see: “The ephemeral Alevi opening.”) But until recently, the details of why exactly the “Armenian opening” had failed was unclear. Last week, speaking to a group of Turkish historians he hosted at his Presidential Palace, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made things clearer. It was a wrong initiative by then-President Abdullah Gul, Erdogan reportedly said, as explained to the media by Mustafa Armagan, one of the historians present at the meeting. It was wrong, because it “gave an upper hand to the other side and paved the way for them to exert pressure on us.”

This statement tells us a lot about the worldview of Turkey’s current president, but first it's worth recalling what exactly had happened in 2008. Turkey and Armenia have had no open border or diplomatic dialogue since 1993, when the latter occupied the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, which Turkey sees as a brotherly nation. But in September 2008, President Abdullah Gul took an unexpected initiative to break this stalemate by visiting Yerevan to watch a World Cup qualifying match between the Turkish and Armenian national teams. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, who warmly hosted Gul, soon afterward came to the Turkish city of Bursa to watch the return match. The positive mood opened the way to the protocols to normalize ties between Turkey and Armenia, signed in Zurich on Oct. 10, 2009, by the foreign ministers of the two countries in the presence of the foreign ministers of France, Russia and the United States. It was an internationally celebrated icon of the more open, confident and reconciliatory “New Turkey” that the AKP was then promising.