ANKARA — Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and his Armenian counterpart, Ararat Mirzoyan, discussed efforts on Tuesday to normalize the two countries’ ties amid a ramping up of diplomatic traffic in the southern Caucasus.
Fidan and Mirzoyan discussed the ongoing dialogue between Yerevan and Ankara aimed at establishing diplomatic ties between the two countries as well as regional developments, according to Armenian state media. The Turkish side also confirmed the conversation, saying the two top diplomats discussed bilateral and regional developments, without further elaboration.
The phone call comes on the heels of a similar phone conversation between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan last Wednesday. The two leaders reasserted in a phone call their determination to normalize relations “without any preconditions,” according to the Turkish readout.
The Ankara-Yerevan dialogue process aiming for full normalization started in January 2022 but has yet to reach a breakthrough, as the Turkish government has pressed for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Azerbaijan is Turkey’s closest national ally, and the two countries — which share common Turkic ethnic roots — described their bond as “one nation, two states.”
Pro-Armenian forces withdrew from the disputed areas of the Nagorno-Karabakh region following a daylong Azerbaijani military offensive in the region last September. That offensive consolidated Baku’s control over the territory and but expelled nearly all of the Armenian population from the disputed region. Baku and Yerevan have yet to reach a comprehensive peace agreement. Speaking earlier this month, Mirzoyan accused Baku of introducing new issues to the negotiation table.
“We have sent very constructive proposals to the Azerbaijani side, and we are ready to … conclude the [peace] treaty during the upcoming month, as we have already proposed,” Mirzoyan said while speaking in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.
“Unfortunately, we have not been hearing from the Azerbaijani side so far. Moreover, Azerbaijan is bringing new issues, which at least raises questions about their genuineness towards the final goal of establishing peace in our neighborhood,” he added.
The ramping up of diplomatic traffic between Turkey and Armenia also comes at a time when Washington is dialing up the pressure on Baku to reach an agreement with Yerevan.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stressed “the significance of concluding an agreement without delay” to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev in a phone call on Thursday.
During a visit to Yerevan earlier this month, Assistant Secretary of State James O’Brien also expressed hope for a peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia “over the next weeks to months.”
Turkey recognized Armenian independence following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, but the two countries didn’t establish diplomatic ties. Turkey also sealed off its border with its eastern neighbor in 1993. This move was part of Turkey’s long-standing policy to support Azerbaijan in its territorial disputes with Armenia.