In a short Facebook post, the ministry spokeswoman, Ani Badalian, said the meeting between Armenian parliament vice-speaker Ruben Rubinian and Turkish diplomat Serdar Kilic will take place “on the Armenia-Turkey border.” Ankara did not immediately did not confirm the announcement.
Successive Turkish governments have kept the border closed for over three decades, demanding a resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict acceptable to Azerbaijan. After several rounds of negotiations held in third countries, Kilic and Rubinian agreed in July 2022 to open it for Armenian or Turkish diplomatic passport holders and citizens of third countries.
Rubinian complained on June 11 that unlike Yerevan, Ankara has taken no steps to implement the agreement. Earlier this year the Armenian side completed the construction of a new border checkpoint in Margara, a village 40 kilometers southwest of the Armenian capital.
Turkish leaders have repeatedly made clear that further progress in the normalization process is contingent on Yerevan’s acceptance of Baku’s terms for an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal. They have singled out the opening of an extraterritorial corridor that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave as well as Turkey through a key Armenian region.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reaffirmed this precondition when he spoke to journalists earlier this month.
“The opening of the Zangezur corridor is the final step of this agreement,” said Erdogan. “We want positive decisions along this path to be made without delay.”
The Armenian government has said, at least until now, that people and goods moving between Nakhichevan to the rest of Azerbaijan cannot be exempt from Armenian border controls and that the two South Caucasus states should have only conventional transport links guaranteeing their full control over all transit routes passing through their respective territories.