Resumption of Turkey and Armenia Negotiations on Tension Reduction and Border Opening

Another round of negotiations between the special representatives of Armenia and Turkey aimed at normalizing long-hostile relations was held at a location on the border of the two countries. Turkey and Armenia do not have official diplomatic relations, and their border has been closed since the 1990s. The two sides agreed to improve relations at the end of 2021 and appointed special representatives to continue negotiations aimed at reconciliation and reopening the borders. According to the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Tuesday, August 1, Special Representative Sardar Qılıç met with Ruben Rubinyan, Vice President of the Armenian Parliament, at the Alijan-Margara border crossing. Tuesday's negotiations mark the fifth meeting of the special representatives of the two countries. The Turkish Foreign Ministry stated that the representatives of the two countries agreed on facilitating visa issuance for holders of diplomatic and official passports, as well as conducting technical assessments for reopening a railway route in the border strip. The statement added: 'The two sides also emphasized the bilateral agreement to advance the normalization process without any preconditions.' The Turkish government closed this border crossing in 1993 in support of its ally Azerbaijan, which was at war with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region at that time. In the six-week war of 2020, which resulted in Azerbaijan regaining a significant portion of Nagorno-Karabakh, Turkey strongly supported Baku, and the Azerbaijani army used Turkish-made military equipment, including combat drones, in these conflicts. This war ended with Russian mediation and the signing of a peace agreement, under which a significant portion of the Nagorno-Karabakh region was ceded to Azerbaijan. Another bitter chapter in the relations between Yerevan and Ankara is the massacre of a large number of Armenians residing in the eastern regions of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 and the forced migration of hundreds of thousands of them to areas that are now in Syria and Lebanon. Most historians consider this event a 'genocide.' However, the Turkish government denies the occurrence of 'genocide' and, while acknowledging the death of a large number of Armenians, claims that the number of victims has been exaggerated and that these events were the result of unrest and civil war during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The Haber Turk television network reported on the meeting of the special representatives of the two countries on Tuesday, stating that they shook hands at the border crossing and then visited both sides of the border in Turkey and Armenia. Sardar Qılıç, Turkey's special representative, and Ruben Rubinyan, Armenia's special representative, met and negotiated three times in Vienna in 2022 and for the last time that year in Moscow. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the President of Turkey, and Nikol Pashinyan, the Prime Minister of Armenia, met for the first time on the sidelines of the European Political Community summit in Prague in 2022. Mr. Pashinyan traveled to Ankara last year to attend the inauguration ceremony of Mr. Erdoğan after his re-election as President of Turkey.