“I express my sincere condolences to the families of victims of the deadly explosion in Istanbul and wish a speedy recovery to the injured,” Mirzoyan wrote in Twitter on Monday, addressing his message to his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu.
At least six people were killed and 81 injured as a result of the explosion in Istanbul’s central Istiklal street in what Turkish authorities have called a terrorist attack.
Armenia and Turkey have no diplomatic relations. At the beginning of this year the governments of the two countries embarked on a process of normalizing relations after decades of feud over historical events, including the Ottoman-era genocide of Armenians that Turkey denies.
The special envoys of Armenia and Turkey designated to conduct normalization talks have meet several times since then. Ruben Rubinian and Serdar Kilic addressed condolences to each other earlier this year when a deadly explosion and fire first hit a supermarket in Yerevan and then deadly traffic accidents happened in the Turkish cities of Gaziantep and Mardin in August.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held their first-ever meeting in Prague on October 6 on the margins of the European Political Community summit initiated by France.
The two leaders reportedly discussed steps towards establishing diplomatic relations between Yerevan and Ankara and opening the Turkish-Armenian border.