The Armenian government contracted recently a private company to construct the checkpoint in Margara, a border village 40 kilometers southwest of Yerevan, in preparation for a planned opening of the Turkish-Armenian border for diplomatic passport holders and citizens of third countries.
Ankara and Yerevan reached an agreement to that effect in July last year following a series of negotiations held by their special envoys. The Armenian negotiator, parliament vice-speaker Ruben Rubinian, said earlier this year that it is due be implemented “at the beginning of this summer.”
However, the Turkish government gave no such indications even after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s June 28 phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The issue was reportedly on the agenda of the call.
“We have had a certain pause in this process, which I think was due to the [presidential] election campaign and the elections in Turkey,” Mirzoyan said during a visit to Austria on Tuesday. “Now it’s time to continue the normalization talks.”
Erdogan and other Turkish leaders have repeatedly made clear that further progress in the normalization process is contingent on the signing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace accord sought by Baku.
The head of Armenia’s State Revenue Committee, Rustam Badasian, said on Thursday that work on the Margara checkpoint is in full swing and will be complete “soon.” “I can't give a specific date,” he told reporters.
Badasian, whose agency comprises the national customs service, did not comment on prospects for the functioning of the Margara facility.
Another interim agreement reached by Rubinian and his Turkish opposite number, Serdar Kilic, called for air freight traffic between the two neighboring nations. There have been no signs of its implementation either, even though the Turkish government officially allowed cargo shipments by air to and from Armenia in January.
In the words of Gagik Musheghian, an Armenian businessman who splits his time between Yerevan and Istanbul, such shipments are possible only “on paper.” He said that as recently as on Monday he inquired about Turkish customs clearance for airlifting a consignment of goods to Armenia.
“They said … it’s not possible to do as a normal [commercial] shipment because they don’t recognize Armenia,” Musheghian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.