Armenian, Turkish special envoys to hold second meeting in Vienna

YEREVAN, February 4, /ARKA/. Special envoys from Turkey and Armenia will hold a second round of talks on February 24 in Vienna, Austria, to normalize ties, Vahan Hunanyan, a spokesman for Armenian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

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 envoys were said to exchange their preliminary views regarding the normalization process through dialogue between Armenia and Turkey. 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 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-