Armenian foreign minister to take part in Antalya diplomacy forum

YEREVAN, March 7. /ARKA/. Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan will travel to the Turkish city of Antalya to take part in a diplomatic forum, the press secretary of the Armenian Foreign Ministry Vahan Hunanyan said on Facebook.

Ararat Mirzoyan and Armenian special envoy for dialogue with Turkey, National Assembly Vice-Speaker Ruben Rubinyan were invited to the forum in Antalya, slated for March 11-13 by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

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-