Jul 29. () –
Armenian and Turkish delegations will meet on Tuesday at their common border as part of talks to normalize bilateral relations, damaged by Ankara’s support for Azerbaijan in the conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
“The fifth meeting of special representatives will be held on July 30 at the Armenian-Turkish border,” Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ani Badalian said on social media X.
The talks began in December 2021. During the fourth meeting held in July 2022 in Vienna, the capital of Austria, both delegations agreed to reopen the land border crossing for third-country nationals.
Following the earthquakes in February, which affected not only several Turkish provinces but also Syria, a border crossing with Armenia was opened to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to the population.
The shared border was closed in 1993 following a wave of clashes between Armenia and ethnic Turks in Azerbaijan, but the two neighbours re-established diplomatic contacts in 2021 and promised to move towards fully reopening the border.
The two countries have been engaged for months in a process of normalising their diplomatic ties, which have been severely damaged by Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and by Ankara’s refusal to recognise the Armenian genocide committed by the former Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923.
Turkey does not deny that the massacres of Armenian civilians took place, but it does not admit that they were genocide, and maintains that the deaths were not the result of a mass extermination plan by the Ottoman Empire.
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