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Turkey and Armenia have announced they will appoint special envoys to work to improve relations, which have been strained for decades.
Ankara and Yerevan have never had official diplomatic relations. Turkey, a key ally of Azerbaijan, a Turkish-speaking country, has closed its border with Armenia since the 1990s over what it said was the occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and its environs by Armenia.
Tensions have risen over the years over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region with an ethnic Armenian population but internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. This region was seceded from Azerbaijan in the early 1990s.
In the autumn of 2020, Armenia and Azerbaijan waged a six-week war in this disputed region, a war that claimed the lives of over 6,500 people. The conflict ended after a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement, according to which the Armenians returned control of the territories they had held for years to Azerbaijan.
As tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan continue, with sporadic fighting, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev are expected to meet in Brussels on December 14, mediated by the European Union.
Armenia is ready for the process of normalization of relations with Turkey “unconditionally”, said on December 14 the spokesman of the Armenian Foreign Ministry, Vahan Hunanian.
Hunanian confirmed that Yerevan will appoint a special representative for the normalization of relations with Turkey. The announcement came a day after a similar announcement was made by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.
“The two respective states will appoint representatives for normalization,” Cavusoglu told Turkish lawmakers, adding that “we will launch direct Yerevan-Istanbul flights in the future.”
Nagorno-Karabakh, populated mainly by Armenians, declared independence from Azerbaijan after the 1988-94 war, in which 30,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced.
Armenia and Turkey had signed an agreement in 2009 to normalize relations, aimed at opening the border between the two countries, but this agreement was never ratified.
Relations between Turkey and Armenia have been strained since the massacre and deportation of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks during the First World War. Armenia insists the massacre is genocide, but Turkey rejects such a claim./ rel
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