Peace talks between Turkey and Armenia to address border issues

ANKARA (AFP): Turkish and Armenian diplomats will meet Tuesday on their long-closed border in a bid to normalise relations between the two countries, Turkey’s foreign ministry told AFP.

Officials will convene “on both sides of the border”, which has been shut for more than three decades, for the highly-symbolic talks.

Diplomatic relations between the two neighbours — who share a painful history — were severed over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 1993.

But four sets of peace talks have been held since envoys were appointed in December 2021 to try to find a way through the impasse.

The fifth meeting will see the envoys discuss “confidence-building measures that could be developed between the two countries”, said Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli.

Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Friday visited the Margara (Alican in Turkish) border crossing, which Yerevan recently renovated in the hope of a breakthrough.

Yerevan has often blamed Ankara for what it deems as insufficient efforts to reopen the frontier, whereas Turkey has said it was waiting for a peace treaty between its ally Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Caucasus rivals Azerbaijan and Armenia fought two wars — in the 1990s and in 2023 — over control of the Karabakh, which had been predominantly populated by ethnic Armenians.

Baku recaptured the mountainous enclave in a lightning offensive last September that led to the exodus of its entire Armenian population — more than 100,000 people.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyib Erdogan was quick to celebrate Azerbaijan’s victory, which he claimed brought “new normalisation prospects” for the region.

Turkish-Armenian relations are haunted by the massacres of Armenians committed during the First World War by the Ottoman Empire before it became modern Turkey — regarded by Yerevan and many nations as a genocide, a term that Ankara rejects.

The US’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said earlier this month that Armenia and Azerbaijan were on the brink of a “dignified” peace deal when he brought their foreign ministers together for talks in Washington.

The Turkish-Armenian border could be reopened to third-country nationals first before opening to all, according to Turkish media.