More than half of Yerevan residents against open border with Turkey
YEREVAN, February 11. /ARKA/. More than half of respondents of a survey conducted in Yerevan spoke out against the opening of the Armenian-Turkish border. The results of the survey conducted by Armenian office of GALLUP International Association were unveiled at a news conference on Friday by the head of the branch Aram Navasardyan.
According to the results of the survey, 54.6% of Yerevan residents are categorically against the open border with Turkey. Another 7.6% of the survey participants are "rather against" and only 6.9% of the respondents fully support this step. The survey was conducted in Yerevan from January 24 to February 2 among 800 citizens.
In fact, Armenia never closed its border with Turkey. It was closed by Turkey in 1993, in a show of solidarity with Azerbaijan which was locked in a conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Special envoys from Turkey and Armenia will hold a second round of talks on February 24 in Vienna, Austria, to normalize ties, it emerged earlier this month.
In December, 2021 the two countries appointed special envoys to normalize relations, who had their first meeting on January 14 in Moscow, Russia.
The first meeting between the Deputy Speaker of Armenia’s National Assembly Ruben Rubinyan, Armenia’s special envoy and his Turkish vis-a-vis- Serdar Kilic was described by both Armenia and Turkey as ‘ positive and constructive.’ The parties agreed to continue negotiations without preconditions aiming at full normalization.
Although Turkey was one of the first countries to recognize Armenia’s independence from the former Soviet Union, the countries have no diplomatic ties. 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-
