Author: Tambiyan Samvel

Armenia’s Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and its special envoy Ruben Rubinyan will attend the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu announced Thursday.

Armenia wants to establish diplomatic relations with Turkey without any preconditions, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Monday, indicating that the country might attend the Antalya Diplomacy Forum.

Speaking at a press conference, he said: “Our special representatives have met. If the process continues like this, it is highly possible that Armenia will participate in the Antalya Diplomacy Forum. It would be irrational to miss a chance to continue meetings.”

The Antalya Diplomacy Forum will be held on March 11-14 in Antalya province, under the motto “Recoding Diplomacy” and will be attended by several heads of states, ministers, academicians and members of the press.

The gathering, where the most important regional and global issues on the world’s agenda will be discussed in a solution-oriented platform, will provide leaders, politicians, prominent academics, thinkers, opinion leaders, diplomats and business people an opportunity to discuss international issues from a diplomatic perspective.

After a 1 1/2 hour meeting recently in Moscow, the Turkish and Armenian foreign ministries published the same statement hailing the talks and agreeing to “continue negotiations without preconditions.” Turkey aims for the next meeting to be held either in Turkey or Armenia, sources said.

Turkey and Armenia have opened talks in Russia to normalise bilateral ties in the expectation of establishing diplomatic relations and reopening the border which was closed in 1993. 

A 2009 peace accord between the countries was never ratified and the 1915 slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire remains highly contentious.

Armenia and much of the international community call the mass killings a genocide while Turkey disputes the death toll and denies the killings were systematically organised or that they constitute a genocide.

Turkish drones were pivotal in Azerbaijan’s rapid victory during the September 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. Turkey has accused Armenian forces of occupying Azerbaijan’s territory since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Armenia’s foreign ministry expects the Moscow talks between special envoys –  former Turkish ambassador to the US Serdar Kilic and Armenia’s deputy parliament speaker Ruben Rubinyan – to begin the process of establishing diplomatic relations and opening the border, according to Russia’s state-controlled Tass news agency.

Turkey and Armenia have no direct trade routes with some goods passing through Georgia.

Armenia’s Economy Ministry announced at the end of the last year that it was lifting an embargo on Turkish imports imposed during the devastating 44-day war with Azerbaijan.

The 2020 conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh claimed more than 6,500 lives and ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire under which Armenia ceded to Azerbaijan territory it had controlled since the breakup of the Soviet Union. 

Bilateral trade could also open a route to traders from Russia, Armenia, Iran and Azerbaijan.

Charter flights between Istanbul and Yerevan are due to begin in early February.

The European Union called Friday’s Moscow meeting “an important step forward”.

“Any further concrete steps towards the normalisation of relations would be good news for regional stability and prospects for reconciliation and economic development,” a statement from Brussels said. 

Emre Peker of the Eurasia Group said Russian influence was vital if the talks were to succeed.

“Talks are likely to pave the way for more discussions in the coming months. But delivering a comprehensive, long-term pact will prove difficult due to the multifaceted nature of the talks and domestic political constraints in both countries. The bigger challenge will come from the question of historic reconciliation,” the analyst said.