Turkey lifted the restriction on direct trade with Armenia on Wednesday as a symbolic gesture to improve ties between its longtime rivals.
Turkey's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Öncü Keçeli said that under the new regulation, shipments of goods from Turkey or Armenia ’ through a third country can now be directly shown as the final destination or point of origin, Turkey or Armenia, and the pre-restriction on such definitions has been lifted.
Using the government's preferred writing for Turkey, in light of the historic opportunity seized to strengthen lasting peace and prosperity in “ South Caucasus, Turkey will continue to contribute to the development of economic relations in the region and the further advancement of cooperation for the benefit of all countries and peoples in the region.’
Armenia welcomed the move.
We would like to emphasize that this is an important step towards the establishment of full and normalized relations between the two countries, which can logically continue through the opening of the Armenia-Turkey border and the establishment of diplomatic relations, ’ said.
Turkey and Armenia ’ have no official relations and their common borders have been closed since the 1990s.
Relations between neighbours are strained by historical disagreements and Turkey's close alliance with Azerbaijan ’.
However, Ankara and Yerevan agreed to work towards improving relations in late 2021’ and appointed special envoys to discuss ways to reconcile and open the border.
Efforts have resulted in the resumption of direct flights between the two countries and the easing of some visa restrictions.
He said technical and bureaucratic efforts to open the common border are also ongoing.
AzerbaijanTurkey, a close ally of ’, closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in solidarity with Baku, which is in conflict with ’ over Karabakh, internationally known as Nagorno-Karabakh.
In 2020, Turkey strongly supported Azerbaijan ’ in its six-week conflict with Armenian-backed ethnic Armenian forces over Karabakh; This caused Azerbaijan ’ to regain control of a significant part of the region and most of the ethnic Armenian population to leave the region.
Azerbaijan used Turkish military equipment, including warplanes, in the conflict.
Turkey and Armenia ’ also have a long and bitter relationship due to the deaths of approximately 1.5 million Armenian ’ in the massacres, deportations and forced marches that began in 1915’ in the Ottoman Turkey ’.
Historians commonly see the event as genocide. Turkey strongly denies this accusation and opposes the numbers; The Ottoman Empire says that among the hundreds of thousands of people who died in the chaos of the First World War ’ during the dissolution of ’, there were also Armenians.
