In her recent Global Opinions column for The Washington Post, prominent Turkish analyst Asli Aydintasbas cited a senior adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as having told her that Turkey “is ready to normalize relations with Armenia” after helping its regional ally Azerbaijan defeat the country in a short and bloody war last November to wrest back control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region. “The official now says they could engage with their historic foe and even open the border crossing,” she noted. The unnamed official told her, “The problem for us has always been Armenian occupation of Azeri territory. That’s now resolved. If Armenia is willing to take a step, we are ready.”
The assertion chimes with Turkey’s long-held policy that it would not establish diplomatic relations with its eastern neighbor nor reopen borders with it until it withdrew from Nagorno-Karabakh. The borders were sealed in 1993 to show solidarity with Azerbaijan over Armenia’s occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-majority enclave that was bestowed by Joseph Stalin to Baku to keep the satellites divided and firmly under Soviet grip.
Critics say Turkey’s apparent magnanimity smacks more of its recent efforts to fix its battered ties with Washington without making the concessions that are actually being demanded of it, namely to get rid of its Russian S-400 missiles immediately. While Aydintasbas agrees that Turkey may be driven by expediency she argues that this is irrelevant. “Sometimes self-serving positions end up producing positive outcomes. This is the first time Turkish officials are formulating a very clear proposal to normalize relations with Armenia,” Aydintasbas told Al-Monitor. “I hope the international community can encourage this.”
The United States and Switzerland were burned once already in 2009, when Turkey signed what was then hailed as historic set of accords they had helped broker with Armenia to forge diplomatic ties and reopen their common borders only to have Erdogan cave to Azerbaijani pressure and walk away.
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