Sergey Minasyan, Deputy Director of the Caucasus Institute
Despite the growing frequency of optimistic statements by officials and experts in both countries, the prospects for progress in Armenian-Turkish normalization remain vague.
Armenia has lately been making symbolic steps that it hopes can push Turkey to activate the process. These steps have included the dispatch of humanitarian aid and Armenian rescue workers to the regions of Turkey affected by the February 2023 earthquake, the subsequent visit of the Armenian foreign minister to Ankara and the earthquake-affected areas and his participation in the Anatolian Diplomatic Forum in March 2024, together with Armenia’s special representative for normalization with Turkey. In June 2023, Armenia’s Prime Minister Pashinyan attended President Erdoğan’s inauguration ceremony. Apart from that, various Armenian and Turkish officials have met at various diplomatic venues and held telephone conversations.
However, Turkey has not reciprocated with any concrete steps since the 2021 appointment of career diplomat Serdar Kılıç as special representative for normalization process between Turkey and Armenia. Even the March 2023 announcement of readiness to open Armenia-Turkey borders to citizens of third countries has remained an announcement. And arguably, Serdar Kılıç’s recent offer to hold his next meeting with his Armenian counterpart in Yerevan, rather than in Moscow or Vienna as used to be the case, also fits into Ankara’s policy of keeping the process symbolic and decorative rather than make any tangible steps, however small.
During all previous efforts to settle relations with Armenia, Turkey consistently tied normalization prospects to Azerbaijan’s interests, specifically, its demands that Armenia make concessions on Nagorno-Karabakh. And while the issue of the Genocide and the two nations’ historical memories have also played a part in Armenian-Turkish relations, in instrumental terms, it was first and foremost to Azerbaijan’s position in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that Turkey linked the Armenia-Turkey diplomatic and political process.
It would seem that following the 2020 Second Karabakh War, and especially after Azerbaijan took full control of Nagorno-Karabakh and cleansed its Armenian population in 2023, there is no longer any reason for the Turkey-Armenia dialogue to be constrained by Azerbaijan’s interests, especially now that Armenia has expressed preparedness to recognize Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and conclude a peace treaty with it reflecting the current situation on the ground. Accordingly, the normalization should now be progressing without impediment.
In reality, the regional context for Armenia-Turkey reconciliation remains unfavorable but for new reasons. The overall regional and military-political context has changed in favor of Azerbaijan and Turkey, and impact of the Russo-Ukrainian war on the South Caucasus is manifest, among other things, in the current negative dynamics in Armenian-Russian relations and the increased significance of Turkey and Azerbaijan in the Kremlin’s geopolitical calculations.
As a result, Turkey as well as Azerbaijan is increasingly tempted to strongarm Armenia into further unilateral concessions, including ones beneficial for Turkey, such as an extraterritorial corridor from Azerbaijan to Nakhichevan across the Syunik region of Armenia. As admitted by Turkish experts and even officials, a direct land connection to Azerbaijan, and further to Central Asia, which would not be under Iran’s control (considering the centuries-old regional rivalry between Turkey and Iran), holds strategic importance for Ankara. Consequently, working jointly with Baku to exert pressure on Yerevan, including by prolonging the Armenian-Turkish process without visible results, is a rational and effective short-term strategy for Turkey, all the more so since it continues to yield tangible results.
This said, there are some factors that foster normalization between Armenia and Turkey and serve to dispel what is effectively a deadlock illusion. The first of these is the position of the West, primarily the USA, some leading European nations, and EU and NATO structures. Since last year’s presidential and this year’s local elections that came at a political as well as financial cost, Erdoğan’s Turkey has been demonstratively constructive in its contacts with the West, not only on global strategic and military-political issues but also in regional geopolitics, especially with regard to Ukraine and the Middle East. Turkey-Armenia normalization is one of the topics, albeit not the most important one, on the agenda of Ankara’s discussions with Washington, and also with Brussels. The Western position had been one of the decisive influences on Turkey during the 2008-2010 Football Diplomacy and at preceding stages of efforts to reconcile Armenia and Turkey.
Thus, the question is to what extent Turkey’s need for a new strategic reconciliation and rapprochement with the USA and the EU can outweigh the political prejudice of the Turkish political elite, or the political and energy-related influence and even pressure exerted by Baku on Ankara. As during all previous attempts at Armenian-Turkish reconciliation, nothing is predetermined. The depth of the deadlock illusion in this process may be greater than it appears, and the Russian factor should not be forgotten either, as the developments of 2009-2010 Armenian-Turkish “football diplomacy” have shown; in the current setup, the exclusive personal relations between Erdoğan and Putin can also play a role.
