ISTANBUL: Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on a rare visit to Turkiye, in what Yerevan described as a “historic” step toward regional peace.

The talks were held at Istanbul’s Dolmabahce Palace.

Armenia and Turkiye have never established formal diplomatic ties and their shared border has been closed since the 1990s.

Analysts said Pashinyan would make the case for speeding up steps towards normalisation with Turkiye in a bid to ease Armenia’s isolation.

Relations between the two nations have been historically strained over allegations of mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

And they have been further complicated by Ankara’s close ties to Turkic-speaking Azerbaijan, and its support for the country in its long-running conflict with Armenia.

Ahead of the talks, Pashinyan visited the Armenian Patriarchal Church and the Blue Mosque and met members of the Turkish Armenian community.

“This is a historic visit, as it will be the first time a head of the Republic of Armenia visits Turkey at this level. All regional issues will be discussed,” Armenian parliament speaker Alen Simonyan told reporters on Thursday.

“The risks of war (with Azerbaijan) are currently minimal, and we must work to neutralise them. Pashinyan’s visit to Turkiye is a step in that direction.”

Peace treaty

An Armenian foreign ministry official said Pashinyan and Erdogan would discuss efforts to sign a comprehensive peace treaty as well as the fallout from the Iran-Israel conflict.

A day ahead of his visit, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev was in Ankara to meet Erdogan, hailing the two nations’ alliance as “a significant factor, not only regionally but also globally”.

Erdogan repeated his backing for “the establishment of peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia”.

The two nations had agreed on the text of a peace deal in March, but Azerbaijan has since outlined a host of demands, including changes to Armenia’s constitution, before it will sign the document.

Pashinyan has actively sought to normalise relations with both Baku and Ankara.

“Pashinyan is very keen to break Armenia out of its isolation and the best way to do that is a peace agreement with Azerbaijan and a normalisation agreement with Turkiye,” Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, said.

The main thing blocking normalisation with Turkiye was Azerbaijan, a close ally of Ankara, he added.

“Turkiye has a strategic dilemma here: on the one hand it wants to stay loyal to Azerbaijan; on the other, opening the Armenian border makes it a bigger player in the South Caucasus,” he said.

Opening the border would help the economy in eastern Turkiye, diminish Russian influence and likely improve Ankara’s ties with Washington and the West, among other things, he said.

“Pashinyan by himself won’t make this happen, it’s only when it moves higher up the Western agenda with Turkiye that you might see change.”

Published in Dawn, June 21th, 2025