Armenian PM congratulates Turkish President on Eid al-Adha
YEREVAN, June 28. /ARKA/. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in a telephone call today with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan congratulated him on the Eid al-Adha holiday.
In response the Turkish President congratulated the Armenian Prime Minister on the upcoming Vardavar, the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, the press service of the Armenian government reported.
Pashinyan and Erdogan were said to discuss the process of normalization of relations between the two countries. In this context, they touched upon the implementation of the agreement on opening the land border for holders of diplomatic passports and citizens of third countries.
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.
On n February 9, Armenia sent 100 tons of aid to quake-stricken Turkey by five trucks through a border gate between the two countries that was opened for the first time in 35 years.
In December 2021, the two countries appointed special envoys to help normalize relations who have had 4 meetings already.-0-
