Armenia and Turkey agree to let third country nationals pass through by land and start direct air transport of goods
YEREVAN, July 1. /ARKA/. Special envoys of Armenia and Turkey for normalization of relations - Ruben Rubinyan of Armenia and Serdar Kilic of Turkey - agreed during their fourth meeting in Vienna today to enable the crossing of the land border between Armenia and Turkey by third-country citizens visiting Armenia and Turkey respectively at the earliest date possible and decided to initiate the necessary process to that end, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said.
It said they also agreed on commencing direct air cargo trade between Armenia and Turkey at the earliest possible date and decided to initiate the necessary process to that effect.
Furthermore, they discussed other possible concrete steps that can be undertaken towards achieving the ultimate goal of full normalization between their respective countries.
Finally, they reemphasized their agreement to continue the normalization process without preconditions.
Kılıç, former ambassador to USA, was named as Turkey's special envoy in December, 2021. Three days later, Armenia appointed its own special representative Ruben Rubinyan, who is also a deputy speaker of the Armenian National Assembly.
The first round of talks was held in Moscow on Jan. 14, where both parties agreed to continue negotiations without any preconditions. The Turkish and Armenian envoys met for the second and third time in Vienna on Feb. 24 and May 3, 2022.
Although Turkey was one of the first countries to recognize Armenia’s independence from the former Soviet Union, the countries have no diplomatic ties and Turkey shut down their common border in 1993, in a show of solidarity with Azerbaijan which was locked in a conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Turkey also refuses to recognize the Armenian genocide, committed during 1915-1923 when an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were massacred by the Ottoman government. The overwhelming majority of historians widely view the event as genocide.
In 2009, Ankara and Yerevan reached an agreement in Zurich to establish diplomatic relations and to open their joint border, but Turkey later said it could not ratify the deal until Armenia withdrew from Nagorno-Karabakh.
In 2020, Turkey strongly backed Azerbaijan in the six-week conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh which ended with a Russia-brokered peace deal that saw Azerbaijan gain control of a significant part of Nagorno-Karabakh. -0-