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Turkey removed a restriction on direct trade with Armenia on Wednesday in a symbolic gesture towards improved ties between the longtime rivals.
Under a new arrangement, shipments of goods from Turkey or Armenia through a third country may now directly list their final destination or point of origin as Turkey or Armenia, lifting a prior restriction on such designations, Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Öncü Keçeli said.
“In the light of the historic opportunity seized to strengthen lasting peace and prosperity in the South Caucasus, Türkiye will continue to contribute to the development of economic relations in the region and to further advancing cooperation for the benefit of all countries and peoples of the region,” Keceli wrote, using the government’s preferred spelling for Turkey.
Armenia welcomed the move.
“We would like to emphasise that this is an important step toward the establishment of full and normalised relations between the two countries, which could logically continue through the opening of the Armenia-Turkey border and the establishment of diplomatic relations,” Armenian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Ani Badalyan said on X.
Turkey and Armenia have no formal relations and their joint border has been closed since the 1990s.
Relations between the neighbours have been strained over historic grievances and Turkey’s close alliance with Azerbaijan.
But Ankara and Yerevan agreed in late 2021 to work towards improving the relationship and appointed special envoys to discuss ways to reconcile and open the border.
The efforts have resulted in the resumption of direct flights between the two countries and the easing of some visa restrictions.
Keçeli also said that technical and bureaucratic work aimed at opening the shared border was continuing.
Turkey, a close ally of Azerbaijan, shut down its border with Armenia in 1993 in a show of solidarity with Baku, which was locked in a conflict with Armenia over Karabakh, a region internationally known as Nagorno-Karabakh.
In 2020, Turkey strongly backed Azerbaijan in its six-week conflict with ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia over Karabakh, which resulted in Azerbaijan regaining control of a significant part of the region and most of the ethnic Armenian population leaving.
Azerbaijan used Turkish military equipment in the conflict, including combat drones.
Turkey and Armenia also have a long and bitter relationship over the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in massacres, deportations and forced marches that began in 1915 in Ottoman Turkey.
Historians widely view the event as genocide. Turkey strongly denies that accusation and disputes the numbers, saying that the Armenians were among hundreds of thousands of people who died in the turmoil of World War I as the Ottoman Empire disintegrated.
Additional sources • AP, AFP
