Armenia's Foreign Minister to attend Antalya diplomatic forum
YEREVAN, March 10, /ARKA/. Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan will be visiting the Turkish city of Antalya March 10-12 to participate in the Antalya Diplomatic Forum, Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vahan Hunanyan said. He said Mirzoyan will have a series of meetings with his colleagues.
Earlier this week Turkey welcomed Mirzoyan’s decision to attend the forum. “We welcomed the statement by the spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Armenia that Foreign Minister Mr. Ararat Mirzoyan will attend the Antalya Diplomacy Forum slated for March 11-13, 2022,” Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tanju Bilgi said in a written statement on March 8, according to Turkish daily Hurriyet.
“Such reciprocal steps will contribute to the advancement of dialogue and discussions on confidence-building measures between the two countries in line with the aim of full normalization,” he added.
Turkey and Armenia had two rounds of talks for the normalization in Moscow and Vienna.
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-
