Asbarez: Ankara Again Preconditions Armenia Border Opening with Yerevan-Baku P

Turkey’s Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Abdulkadir Uraloğlu speaks to RFE/RL reporter in Antalya, Turkey on Nov. 10

Ankara will open the Armenian-Turkish border when Armenia and Azerbaijan sign a full peace treaty, Turkey’s Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, Abdulkadir Uraloğlu, said on Tuesday.

“We expect Armenia and Azerbaijan to reach a full agreement. This is important to us. I have held discussions about this with my Armenian counterpart,” Uraloğlu told a reporter from RFE/RL during the COP31 UN Climate Summit being held in Antalya, Turkey.

“We have carried out the necessary preparatory work for the opening of both the railway tracks [referring to the Kars–Gyumri railway] and the land border at Alijan. Given mutual agreement—and taking into account Azerbaijan’s sensitivities—we believe that once an agreement is reached, the opening of the border will not take long. God willing, it will happen in a short time,” Uraloğlu added.

Following the 44-day Artsakh war, Yerevan and Ankara initiated a new phase in the normalization of their relations without preconditions and agreed to open the border to citizens of third countries. However, Turkey has yet to open the border—which has remained closed for over three decades—consistently conditioning such a move on the normalization of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations. Yerevan and Baku initialed a peace treaty last year, but have not yet signed it.

Although the primary agreement remains only on paper, Yerevan views its dialogue with Ankara as productive. The Margara checkpoint—situated opposite the Turkish checkpoint of Alican—was renovated two years ago, and there is hope that Ankara will open the border in the near future.

In the summer, it was revealed that Armenia’s Ministry of Territorial Administration had announced a tender for design work related to the construction of the Gyumri-Kars railway. The results of the tender have not yet been announced.

Furthermore, in October, Armenian and Turkish officials met in Yerevan to discuss efforts toward restoring the Gyumri-Kars power transmission line. In July, the mayor of Akyaka—a town bordering the Shirak region—told Azatutyun that construction work is underway to restore the infrastructure of the Akyaka–Gyumri railway. According to the official, this work is expected to be completed in two to three months. The mayor of the town, located in Kars Province, also stated that a tender has already been announced for the construction of a land route from Akyaka to Gyumri.