Turkey-Armenia rapprochement seeks to end decades-long rivalry

First modification: 07/12/2022 – 16:18

On one side of the phone, Erdogan; from the other, Pashinian. It is the first time that the two leaders have spoken, an achievement resulting from a new attempt to normalize bilateral relations that gained strength on July 1 when special delegates from both countries met in the Austrian capital, Vienna, to work on carrying out an agreement.

Both the Turkish and the Armenian executives supported the agreement and especially one of the first points: the opening of the airspace through cargo plane flights. The foreign ministers of both nations hope that these flights will come into force “as soon as possible.”

However, the cordial image between Erdogan and Pashinian is not accidental. The rapprochement process has been extensive and is produced thanks to gestures of truce on both sides. One of the first steps was taken by Pashinian when on January 1 he lifted the embargo imposed a year ago on products made in Turkey. Furthermore, this is the second attempt to normalize relations, after negotiations failed in 2009.

Hard-to-heal wounds

Turkey and Armenia have historically been rivals for cultural reasons dating back to the early 20th century, when in 1914 Ottoman authorities under the command of the Young Turks, an ultra-nationalist party, massacred an as yet undetermined number of Armenian civilians. The figures of fatalities vary according to the side: Turkey speaks of less than 300,000 people; while Armenia assures that more than one and a half million compatriots perished. The United States and several countries of the European Union classify these massacres as genocide.

Added to this tragic memory is the current religious tension due to the fact that the majority of the Turkish people are Muslim and, for their part, the majority of Armenians are Christian.

But the turning point in recent bilateral relations occurred during the first Armenian-Azerbaijani war, when in 1993 Turkey decided to unilaterally sever the nascent relationship with Armenia in solidarity with the defeat suffered by the Azeris.

This first conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis lasted from 1988 to 1994 and originated from the independence claims of Nagorno-Karabakh, an autonomous region of Azerbaijan, which sought to join Armenia in favor of the dismemberment of the then Soviet Union.

Nagorno-Karabakh has an Armenian and Christian majority, so a significant part of the population feels more represented by Armenia than by Azerbaijan. The war left more than 30,000 dead and 700,000 Azeris displaced. Armenia took advantage of its triumph to seize the whole of Karabakh.

However, after the end of the war, Azerbaijan gradually recovered southern Upper Karabakh and has tried in recent years to negotiate control of the territory with Russia, a country that has had a significant military presence in Karabakh with its well-known ‘peacekeeping forces’.

The 44 day war

The second Nagorno-Karabakh war began in September 2020 and the causes are a matter of narrative dispute. Armenia claimed that an attack on a civilian settlement by the Azeris was the trigger for the confrontation. Azerbaijan defended the argument of the counteroffensive as they were supposedly the first to have been attacked with the murder at the hands of Armenians of a family in their territory.

This new war ended the lives of at least 6,000 people and left thousands missing. The cessation of hostilities occurred again through the intermediation of Russia with the signing of an armistice on November 9, 2020.

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During that conflict, Turkey supported Azerbaijan from the public arena, but also from the military field with the provision to Azerbaijan of Turkish-made armed drones that were decisive for the favorable outcome of the Azeris in the control of several areas of Nagorno-Karabakh before occupied by Armenia.

For this reason, an eventual success in the normalization of bilateral relations between Ankara and Yerevan will temporarily consolidate the end of hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh. However, there are points that have not yet been agreed between the two nations, such as Turkey’s recognition of the Armenian genocide.

With EFE and local media