Particular envoys from Turkey and Armenia will meet for the primary time on January 14 in Moscow, their respective overseas ministries introduced on Wednesday.
Ankara and Yerevan lack diplomatic relations. However in December, the neighboring international locations agreed to name special envoys to put the groundwork for normalization.
The Turkish Overseas Ministry named profession diplomat Serdar Kilic, a former Turkish ambassador to the US, as its particular envoy. Armenia appointed deputy parliament speaker Ruben Rubinyan as Kilic’s counterpart.
Turkey shut its borders to Armenia in 1993 in solidarity with its ally Azerbaijan, which was locked in a bitter warfare with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh area. In 2020, Ankara backed Baku in its newest battle with Yerevan over the disputed enclave, which after six weeks resulted in a Russian-brokered truce.
Turkey and Armenia’s relationship can also be strained over the mass killing of as much as 1.5 million Armenians by the hands of Ottoman forces starting in 1915. Ankara has lengthy denied {that a} genocide came about.
The deliberate assembly comes as Turkey seeks to fix ties with various different international locations within the area, together with Israel, Egypt and several other Gulf states. This week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced plans to go to Saudi Arabia in February.
In an indication that the relations between Armenia and Turkey are enhancing, Armenia’s economic system ministry introduced in late December that it was lifting an embargo on Turkish imports that was imposed throughout final 12 months’s 44-day warfare.
Turkish Overseas Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said final month that bothTurkish and Armenian airways have utilized to offer flights between Istanbul and Yerevan.
