For more than three years now, Turkey and Armenia have been holding Western-backed talks aimed at ending decades of hostility and allowing them to establish diplomatic relations and reopen their sealed land border. 

Hence when Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on June 20 for formal talks, it was reasonable to expect that a big announcement would be made. It was, after all, the first meeting of its kind between Turkish and Armenian leaders, touted by Yerevan as a “historic step” toward regional peace and hosted at an Ottoman palace where many such accords had been signed. Instead, the sides issued vague statements about the “potential steps” discussed and the “significance of the consensus reached” between Armenia and Azerbaijan in their peace negotiations. The pair had also touched upon the recent conflict between Israel and Iran. Diplomatic relations remain nonexistent, and the border crossing shut.

The embarrassing lack of progress is being used by Pashinyan’s Russian-backed domestic foes to paint him as a treacherous Turkish lapdog, one who holds Turkey and Azerbaijan’s interests above those of his own country. The Kremlin’s real worry stems from Pashinyan’s determined push to root out Russian influence in the former Soviet republic and to align his country with Europe and the United States.

“It’s an East-West fight,” Eric Hacopian, an American-Armenian political consultant, told Al-Monitor.