By Mark Dovich
Armenia and Turkey have reaffirmed their commitment to partially reopening their border and fully normalizing relations, though without providing any timeframe.
Meeting Tuesday for the first time in two years, special envoys Ruben Rubinyan of Armenia and Serdar Kılıç of Turkey “reconfirmed the agreements reached at their previous meetings” and “reemphasized their agreement to continue the normalization process without any preconditions,” the two countries said in identical readouts.
Rubinyan and Kılıç reached a landmark deal in July 2022 to open the border to citizens of third countries and holders of diplomatic passports “at the earliest possible date,” but more than two years on, that agreement still exists only on paper, and the border remains closed.
In addition, negotiators agreed Tuesday for the first time to “assess the technical requirements” needed to restore a derelict railway connecting the cities of Gyumri in northwestern Armenia and Kars in northeastern Turkey. No other details were made immediately available.
The talks came just more than a month after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey said in a rare phone call they have the “political will to fully normalize relations.”
What’s the background?
Armenia and Turkey recognize each other but have no formal diplomatic ties, and relations remain extremely fraught. Disputes includes Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide and its crucial role aiding Azerbaijan in its victory in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war.
Efforts to normalize relations took on a new life in late 2021, when Yerevan and Ankara appointed special envoys for talks, marking the first direct negotiations between Armenian and Turkish officials in more than a decade.
The two countries’ border has been closed since the early 1990s, when Turkey imposed a devastating economic blockade on Armenia in response to the outbreak of hostilities with Azerbaijan in and around Nagorno-Karabakh.
Since then, the border has opened only once, when Yerevan sentaid trucks overland to Ankara following a disastrous earthquake last February that leveled swaths of southern Turkey and northern Syria, killing tens of thousands of people.
The post Armenia and Turkey ‘reconfirm’ agreement to open border appeared first on CIVILNET.