Turkey and Armenia are to mutually appoint particular envoys to debate normalizing traditionally hostile ties between the 2 neighbors.
Turkey’s overseas minister, Mevlut Cavusuglu, introduced the information within the parliament on Monday. He stated Turkey would additionally resume constitution flights between Istanbul and Yerevan.
The thaw comes barely over a yr after Turkey intervened militarily to clinch Azerbaijan’s victory over Armenia when the long-dormant battle erupted anew in October.
Azerbaijan wrested again all of the occupied territories in a brief, sharp struggle that was deeply traumatizing for Armenia, which lives within the shadow of the 1915 genocide of greater than 1,000,000 Armenians within the Ottoman Empire. In more moderen years, the borders have remained sealed since 1993, when Armenia occupied giant swathes of Turkey’s shut ally Azerbaijan in a bloody battle over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave
When Turkey first started talking about peace with Armenia in February, it appeared like a ploy to win favor with the newly put in Biden administration. The US beneath Barack Obama had performed a key function in a peace accord between Turkey and Armenia in 2009. Azerbaijani stress, nevertheless, prompted Ankara to shelve that deal, and relations have been tense ever since.
Landlocked Armenia is raring to re-open the border with Turkey. Moscow which lengthy labored to take care of the maintain of a handful of pro-Russian oligarchs over its former Soviet vassal, seems to have modified its tune. The struggle allowed Russia to additional increase its army presence within the southern Caucasus, deploying “peacekeepers” in Nagorno-Karabakh for the primary time. With Armenia ever extra depending on Russia to fend off any additional Azerbaijani encroachment, peace with Turkey poses no menace to Moscow’s hegemony. Quite the opposite, it permits the growth westward of its Eurasian Financial Union and additional isolates Russia’s regional bugbear, Georgia.
It stays to be seen whether or not diplomatic ties will likely be launched concurrently with the re-opening of the borders or whether or not one precedes the opposite. Azerbaijan additionally seems to now not oppose peace between Turkey and Armenia.
Russian president Vladimir Putin met with Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev within the Black Sea port of Sochi final month to debate commerce and transport hyperlinks and new borders to higher replicate the stability of forces on the bottom. Aliyev and Pashinian are set to fulfill once more in Brussels on Thursday. Azerbaijan desires a transport hall by way of Armenia that will hyperlink Azerbaijan to the Azerbaijani Nakichevan enclave bordering Turkey. The hall would give Turkey entry to Azerbaijan correct, a prospect that Armenia is sad about.
Regardless of all of the dovish discuss, the ceasefire lines between Armenia and Azerbaijan remain tense. Dozens have been killed from each side since a Russian-brokered truce in November 2021 that ended the battle.
