Turkey’s President on Sunday said his country was “ready for talks with Armenia” but added Yerevan needed to take steps towards opening a “corridor” that would have to go through Armenia to connect Azerbaijan to Nakhijevan, AFP reports.
Armenia and Turkey have no diplomatic relations and the shared border has been closed since the 1990s.
Earlier this month, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Yerevan was prepared to hold discussions on repairing relations with Ankara.
“We are not closed to talks (with Armenia), we will hold the talks,” Erdogan told reporters at an Istanbul airport before leaving for New York where he will attend the annual UN General Assembly meetings.
“I hope that not a negative but a positive approach will prevail there,” he said. “God willing, the problem between Azerbaijan and Armenia will be overcome with the opening of the corridors.”
Addressing a government meeting on September 8, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said “deepening or normalization of relations with neighboring countries is an important foreign policy priority.”
Referring to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s latest statements, Nikol Pashinyan said “we see an opportunity to talk about normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations, recommissioning of the rail and road communication.”
At the same time, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has declared on many occasions that “Armenia has never discussed and will not discuss anything under the logic of a corridor.” He has empathized that neither the November 9, nor the January 11th statement make any mention of a “corridor.”
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