Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian will travel to Türkiye on Saturday to attend President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s inauguration ceremony, as the two countries try to mend relations.

“Armenia received an invitation to attend the ceremony of inauguration of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,” the statement said.

“Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan will travel to Ankara on June 3 to take part in the ceremony.”

Armenia and Türkiye have never established formal diplomatic relations and their shared border has been closed since the 1990s.

Türkiye objects to presenting the 1915 incidents as “genocide,” and instead describes the events as a tragedy in which both Turks and Armenians suffered casualties in the heat of World War I.

Ankara has repeatedly proposed the creation of a joint commission of historians from Türkiye and Armenia under the supervision of international experts to examine the issue.

In December 2021, the two countries appointed special envoys to help normalize relations – a year after Armenia lost to Türkiye’s ally Azerbaijan in a war for control of the Armenian-occupied Karabakh region.

Azerbaijan used the help of Turkish combat drones to recapture most of the contested territory that had been under ethnic Armenian control since the 1990s.

In 2009, Ankara and Yerevan signed an agreement to normalize relations, which would have led to the opening up of their shared border.

But Armenia never ratified the deal and in 2018 ditched the process.