Mirzoyan met with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu and also visited Adiyaman, one of the cities in southeastern Turkey ravaged by last week’s powerful earthquake. The Armenian government sent more humanitarian aid to its residents during his trip.
Mirzoyan said he and Cavusoglu reached “concrete understandings” on bilateral ties as he spoke during a weekly government meeting in Yerevan chaired by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
“I can announce a decision to accelerate the process of dialogue and the process aimed at the ultimate opening of the [Turkish-Armenian] border,” he told fellow cabinet members.
Mirzoyan reiterated that the two sides plan to rebuild a medieval bridge over a river marking a section of the closed frontier. He also announced that they could open the border to citizens of third countries as well as holders of Turkish and Armenian diplomatic passports this summer.
Turkey - Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan meet in Ankara, February 15, 2023.
Speaking at a joint news conference with Mirzoyan on Wednesday, Cavusoglu said the assistance provided by Armenia to victims of the devastating earthquake could facilitate the normalization process. But he appeared to link that process to the outcome of Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks.
Turkey has for decades made the opening of the border and the establishment of diplomatic relations with Armenia conditional on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal acceptable to Azerbaijan. Turkish leaders have repeatedly reaffirmed this precondition since the start of the normalization talks with Yerevan in January 2022.
Ankara briefly opened one of the border crossings on Saturday and Wednesday to receive two batches of Armenian humanitarian aid. According to Mirzoyan, it will also allow the 27 members of an Armenian search-and-rescue team, who flew to Adiyaman last week, to return home through the same border gate.