Turkey-Armenia normalization proceeds (or not) with Baku’s consent
YEREVAN — “Do you really want to go there? If you want to look at Turkey, you’ll get a better view from the Khor Virap Monastery,” says a bemused taxi driver when I tell him my destination is Margara.
The quiet border town made headlines in July 2024, when an Armenian and Turkish envoy met there to inspect the newly renovated border post. A year earlier, the crossing opened briefly for the first time since 1993 to allow passage to an Armenian government convoy of humanitarian aid following devastating earthquakes in southeastern Turkey.
Today, more than 30 years after Armenia's independence, Turkey and its eastern neighbor are still trying to find common ground. There have been many recent bilateral meetings but tangible outcomes seem to be on hold until Armenia and Azerbaijan take steps toward a peace treaty.
With such an uncertain outlook, it’s no wonder that the M3 highway connecting Yerevan to the Turkish border is full of potholes and lined with stork nests instead of shops.
“Can you believe that one day this will be the highway from Turkey?” the taxi driver asks.
At the entrance to the last village before the Turkish border, the remains of an abandoned Soviet tank rusts away, while on the other side of the fence the snow-capped peak of Mount Ararat looms. In stark contrast to its surroundings, the Armenian border post gleams freshly painted.
Turkey closed the border in 1993 during the First Karabakh War in solidarity with its ally, Azerbaijan. The July meeting at the border post was part of the fifth consecutive round of bilateral talks since 2022.
Both parties “reemphasized their agreement to continue the normalization process without any preconditions towards achieving the ultimate goal of full normalization,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement released after the meeting.
Yet the exact definition of normalization remains a matter of interpretation. For Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center (RSC) in Yerevan, the core of any progress on normalization is straightforward.
”First and foremost, [it’s] the establishment of diplomatic relations – most likely from a consulate in neighboring Georgia, so it doesn’t have to be an official embassy opening. The second objective would be to reopen a border crossing to the public.”
According to the July 2022 agreement on the normalization process, the border would first be opened to third-country citizens. As of October 2024, this has yet to be implemented, although the Armenian side has signaled its readiness in Margara.
30 years in a cycle of normalization
As a third-country citizen, I stand out in the village. At noon on a Wednesday in late October, only two elderly men and a child walk the dusty road in front of the border post.
We chat a bit and they direct me to the barracks further down the road where the border guards stay. Here, a Russian and an Armenian flag stand side by side. Since 1992, Armenia's borders with Turkey and Iran have been guarded by Russian border guards.
According to a new agreement between Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan and Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin, Armenian guards will join the forces starting in 2025.
Since Armenia's independence in 1991, its relations with Turkey have been in a cycle of ongoing normalization. There have been several attempts to find a common ground between the two neighboring countries.
Efforts have spanned the “football diplomacy” of the late 2000s – when it seemed possible that two heads of state attending football matches in each other’s countries would initiate a diplomatic thaw – to the current series of realpolitik talks in the aftermath of the pivotal Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020.
The latest chapter was opened after Azerbaijan regained control of all the territory in the disputed areas in its 2023 offensive and expelled the ethnic Armenian population. The status of Nagorno-Karabakh was the reason for Turkey’s border closure in the first place.
"I would argue that there has been movement and significant progress in the last two years," Giragosian told Turkey recap in reference to the current state of normalization.
Several high-level meetings were held in the aftermath of 2023’s ‘earthquake diplomacy’. More recently, Pashinyan and Turkish Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met in September on the sidelines of the United Nations summit in New York City. Then, in October, the foreign ministers held bilateral talks at the 3+3 meetings in İstanbul.
But since the Turkish and Armenian envoys agreed to enable land border crossings for third-country citizens and commence direct air cargo trade “at the earliest date possible” during their fourth meeting in July 2022, two years have passed without any implementation.
Benyamin Poghosyan, senior research fellow at the Applied Policy Research Institute of Armenia (APRI), isn't surprised by the delay. In his opinion, there have always been Turkish preconditions no matter what has been stated in the official statements.
"It felt like we were watching two different processes: the official bilateral talks and the reality in which Turkish politicians wanted their counterparts to meet Azerbaijan's demands," Poghosyan told Turkey recap.
After a bloody war over the mountainous area in the Southern Caucasus, a cease-fire agreement was signed in 1994, and the unrecognized Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh was established within Azerbaijan's international borders. The de-facto independent state for ethnic Armenian communities was heavily reliant on close economic, military and political ties with mainland Armenia.
During the "football diplomacy" years of the mid-2000s, the Armenian leadership tried to separate the Karabakh issue from their bilateral talks with Turkey.
"The idea was to create divisions in the relations between Turkey and Azerbaijan and highlight the benefits of open borders," Poghosyan said.
This approach proved unsuccessful as Azerbaijan pressured the Turkish government not to deepen its relations with Armenia without a solution to the Karabakh issue.
Border talks and corridors
Back on the ground in Margara, I learned the hard way that border security is taken seriously.
After taking a photo of the Russian and Armenian flags in front of Mount Ararat, I continued to tour the area by foot until two soldiers approached me. They said a villager had seen me taking a photo of the border post.
I tried to explain myself, but it was too late. A Russian-speaking German walking along the border to Turkey: that sounds suspect. Two sergeants soon arrived, forced me to delete the photo and took my passport. I was detained.
For the next two hours, the guards tried to make sense of my story. They played good cop-bad cop. Then, when one of the guards stepped out, I got to ask a few questions myself.
"When do you think the border will open?" I asked the good cop.
"After the war with Azerbaijan," he said solemnly, referring to ongoing fighting between the two nations.
Pointing to the border post, he added, "The day we have a peace treaty, our side will be ready.”
In his opinion, an eventual border-opening with Turkey could not be considered in isolation from the unresolved peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Daria Isachenko, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), also believes that progress in Turkey-Armenia normalization depends on actions by the government in Baku.
“It is very unlikely that Ankara would negotiate with Armenia without accommodating the interests of Baku,” Isachenko told Turkey recap. “After the Second Karabakh War, the two have become closer and signed the Shusha declaration on allied relations in 2021. Moreover, Azerbaijan is also a major investor in Turkey.”
According to Poghosyan, the Armenian government had hoped that Azerbaijani control over Nagorno-Karabakh would have removed the biggest obstacle to normalization with Turkey.
"Last year's developments proved that these hopes were far from reality – as of now, there is no peace agreement and Baku is pushing new demands such as the Zangezur Corridor," Poghosyan said.
Discussions about the Zangezur Corridor gained traction shortly after Azerbaijan’s victorious campaign in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020. It would provide Baku with a direct link between Azerbaijan and its exclave Nakhchivan – which would also mean an overland connection to Turkey.
"The corridor would strengthen Baku's position as a key gateway to Central Asian markets and contribute to cooperation of Turkic countries,” Isachenko said. "Having won back Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan feels it should be treated as a regional player."
Erdoğan said in a speech in July that the proposed land route through Zangezur would “benefit everyone, especially Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Iran”.
The governments in Yerevan and Tehran, however, have a diametrically opposed view of the issue, as the corridor would cut through southern Armenia and potentially block the direct trade route between the two countries. Moreover, the current link from Azerbaijan to its exclave of Nakhchivan passes through Iranian territory, giving Tehran some leverage over the transportation route.
The possible opening of the border between Turkey and Armenia also raises the question of potential beneficiaries – especially in economic terms.
Open borders: Threat or benefit?
After finally convincing the border guards that I posed no immediate threat to national security, the good cop drove me in his Opel Omega to the next village. He made sure I entered a taxi and waved goodbye while taking a picture of the car’s license plate.
In the taxi, it was my turn to be suspicious – regarding the driver. After learning that I was from Berlin, he welcomed me in perfect German. He said he fled the First Karabakh War with his family in 1993 and had lived in northern Germany for 12 years.
Back in Yerevan and a day later, I met Mariam Saghatelyan in her wine bar In Vino. In Saghatelyan’s view, her small wine business would provide an example of how open borders might effect sectors of the economy not directly impacted by Turkish exports.
"We have a thousand different wines from all over the world in our shop – every single one of those bottles has to come through Georgia by land."
Along with imports, Saghatelyan also produces wine at her family's vineyard in Aghavnadzor. She said getting the desired goods for winemaking into the landlocked nation with two closed borders can be challenging at times.
In theory, a possible trade route through Turkey would make it easier and cheaper to obtain the needed materials, such as bottles or corks, she said.
"But I have no idea what would actually happen, I have never seen the borders open," Saghatelyan told Turkey recap.
The latest public opinion survey conducted by the IRI in Armenia painted a more negative picture of the prospects: 54 percent of respondents said they saw Turkey as the biggest economic threat, ahead of Russia and Azerbaijan.
However, the general hunch of what to expect from a possible opening is in line with many experts’ opinions on the issue: It would facilitate trade, which could also enable more competitive Turkish companies to push some local Armenian companies out of the market.
The outlook: Waiting for peace
According to Poghosyan from APRI, the ball is now in Ankara's court. Armenia’s government continued the normalization talks despite Turkey’s significant military support for Azerbaijan. In April, Pashinyan told Armenians to “overcome the trauma of 1915” which some analysts interpreted as a concession to Ankara.
"Pashinyan's government is basically signaling that if there's political will on the Turkish side, relations can be normalized tomorrow. But in the third year of normalization talks, it looks more like an imitation of negotiations,” Poghosyan told Turkey recap.
A major reason for the current stalemate is the lack of progress in peace treaty negotiations between Yerevan and Baku. While some small steps can be seen on the technocratic level – for example, in regards to future talks about border delimitation – the list of demands from the Azerbaijani side is long.
RSC’s Giragosian said Turkey would need some political cover from Baku to facilitate any progress in the normalization talks.
"Turkey has made it clear that it needs some kind of progress in the peace process to justify its course of action,” Giragosian said. “This could be, for example, an agreement on the framework of a peace treaty.”
The next chance for that to happen might be on the sidelines of the COP 29 Summit in Baku this week, if Armenia’s Pashinyan decides to attend.
After more than 30 years of normalization talks, Giragosian remarks that it was never supposed to be easy and quick: “I think the stars have aligned enough for an opportunity to progress or an opening to be disappointed yet again.”
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