Armenian, Turkish envoys hold first meeting for normalization of relations

YEREVAN, January 14, /ARKA/. The Deputy Speaker of Armenia’s National Assembly Ruben Rubinyan, appointed as Armenia’s special envoy to negotiate normalization of relations with Turkey, ahead of the first meeting with his Turkish vis-a-vis- Serdar Kilic, had a meeting with the Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Andrey Rudenko in Moscow, the Armenian Foreign ministry reported.

It said Rubinyan and Rudenko exchanged views on the normalization process between Armenia and Turkey.

Later the meeting of the envoys took place. During their first meeting, conducted in a positive and constructive atmosphere, the envoys exchanged their preliminary views regarding the normalization process through dialogue between Armenia and Turkey, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said.

It said also that the parties agreed to continue negotiations without preconditions aiming at full normalization.

The date and the venue of their second meeting will be decided in due time through diplomatic channels, it said.

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-