Erdogan awaits Pashinyan on historic visit

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan will visit Turkey on June 20 at the invitation of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It is noteworthy that before that, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met with the Turkish leader. In this regard, the media suggested that the heads of the Caucasian republics could hold talks in Ankara to sign a peace treaty, but this rumor was denied in Yerevan.

As Secretary of the Armenian Security Council Armen Grigoryan said, the country’s authorities continue to work on the settlement of diplomatic relations with Turkey and the opening of borders. “This is not an ideal version of what we would like to achieve, but we see progress,” Grigoryan said. For his part, Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan could not say whether the visit would be a working or official one, but it would certainly turn out to be historic.

“The visit is very important, it is the first bilateral visit since independence. Especially in this vibrant region, I think we need to talk to Turkey and understand each other. At the moment, the issue of the settlement of Armenian-Turkish relations is on the agenda, which our envoys have been negotiating for several years,” said Arman Egoyan, a member of the ruling Civil Treaty party.

It should be recalled that the process of normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations has been going on since the early 1990s. In particular, all Armenian presidents, without exception, met with the heads of Turkey. For example, in 1993, Levon Ter-Petrosyan attended the funeral of Turkish leader Turgut Ozal. In 1999, Robert Kocharyan signed the OSCE Istanbul Declaration, which stated the recognition of the territorial integrity of all member countries of the organization. In 2009, Serzh Sargsyan visited Turkey as part of the so-called football diplomacy. This will be the second visit for Pashinyan. For the first time as prime minister, he visited Ankara in 2023, when he attended Erdogan’s inauguration.

The key topic of the negotiation process at the moment is the unblocking of the land border between the countries, which has been closed since 1993. A corresponding agreement was reached in 2022, but since then there has been no progress. At the same time, Armenia repaired its border checkpoint in the village of Margara on the border with Turkey, stressing that it is ready for operation. In turn, Ankara insists that before settling bilateral relations, Yerevan must first conclude a peace treaty with Baku.

The Armenian media, which is critical of Pashinyan, claims that he may meet with Aliyev on October 20. “With Erdogan’s mediation, the parties can agree to sign an agreement, which will mean excluding the military presence of a third party. In other words, the Russian 102nd military base will be withdrawn from Armenia. The agreement will also include an annex that will specify all other requirements of the Azerbaijani side, including the return of 300,000 Azerbaijanis to Armenia,” the newspaper reports. It should be noted that Pashinyan promised to sue Graparak.

Political analyst Arshaluys Mgdesyan believes that the upcoming meeting can be historic only in terms of format. “Until now, Armenian leaders have traveled to Turkey as part of some international events, football matches or funerals. Now Erdogan has personally invited Pashinyan. Maybe, during the visit, Pashinyan will meet with Aliyev after all. This possibility cannot be completely ruled out,” Mgdesyan said.

At the same time, the expert doubts that the visit will be historic in terms of effectiveness. “So far, we do not see Turkey changing its approach towards Armenia or Azerbaijan. Ankara has been and is still maintaining diplomatic relations with Yerevan since the conclusion of the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. Now the Turkish authorities are not peddling this topic so much, but this is only due to the fact that Baku has already achieved a lot since the beginning of the second Karabakh war. At the same time, a peace treaty is unlikely to be signed in the near future due to the conditions set by the Azerbaijani side,” concluded Mgdesyan. Baku demands that Armenia remove from the Constitution the mention of the declaration of independence, which refers to unification with Nagorno-Karabakh, and insists on the liquidation of the OSCE Minsk Group.