Turkish press: Ankara and Yerevan ready for negotiations on normalization of relations in September
Meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Turkey and Armenia on March 12 in Antalya
The Turkish TV channel A Haber reports, citing a source in the Turkish Foreign Ministry, that regular negotiations between Yerevan and Ankara may take place in the near future. With a high degree of probability, in September, the delegations of the two countries will meet in Turkey. The Turkish Foreign Ministry believes that it is inappropriate to organize a meeting in third countries.
We must secure a lasting peace
- said a source in the Turkish Foreign Ministry, while calling the negotiation process fragile.
This will be the fifth meeting at which, like the previous ones, issues of normalizing relations between the two countries will be discussed. The first talks on this topic took place in January in Moscow. They were very successful, as a result, in particular, it was decided to resume flights between Armenia and Turkey. Air traffic was interrupted in 2020, flights were resumed in February of this year. The remaining four rounds of negotiations took place in Vienna.
As a result of previous negotiations, the parties agreed to open the land border between Armenia and Turkey in the near future for the crossing of citizens of third countries arriving in transit to neighboring states.
The parties also discussed other specific steps that can be taken to ensure the full normalization of relations between the two countries. The parties reiterated their agreements to continue the normalization process without preconditions
- the Turkish Foreign Ministry reported following the results of the fourth summit.
The border between Turkey and Armenia was closed at the initiative of Ankara in 1993. The main reason for disagreements between neighboring countries is Ankara's support for the Azerbaijani position on the Karabakh problem and Turkey's negative attitude towards the process of international recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire.
In 2009, in Zurich, the foreign ministers of the two states signed protocols on the principles for regulating border relations, but these documents were not ratified by the parties. In March 2018, Armenia announced the annulment of the protocols. In 2021, both countries appointed special representatives for the settlement of bilateral relations.
In recent days, the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh on the line of demarcation, where Russian peacekeepers are stationed, has escalated again. Russia acts as a guarantor in the trilateral agreement between the Russian Federation, Armenia and Azerbaijan to resolve the Karabakh problem. Given the special operation in Ukraine, Moscow is now least interested in the emergence of a new hotbed of tension near its borders. It is possible that, given the rapprochement between Russia and Turkey, Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the issue of further reconciliation between Ankara and Yerevan with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Apparently very successful.
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