“Armenia is ready to open the [Turkish-Armenian] border, but Turkey is not taking any new steps,” Simonian told reporters at the end of a visit to Istanbul during which he attended a session of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
“At first, they said that the border will not open until the Nagorno-Karabakh issue is resolved,” he said, according to the Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos. “Then they said that the Karabakh issue is resolved. Then they brought up the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace agreement. We negotiated, agreed on 17 points, initialed it, shook hands, but nothing happened after that.”
Turkish media reported late last year that Ankara is finally preparing to open the border for Armenian and Turkish diplomatic passport holders as well as citizens of third countries in line with a 2022 agreement with Yerevan. They said that this will likely happen in March, ahead of Armenia’s parliamentary elections slated for June.
Armenian analysts suggested that Ankara will thus hope to boost Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s reelection chances. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan mentioned the Armenian polls and praised Pashinian in that context in January. Armenian opposition leaders decried what they called Fidan’s endorsement of Pashinian.
In a sign of Yerevan’s frustration with the Turks, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan skipped last week an annual diplomatic forum in the Turkish city of Antalya. Mirzoyan had attended the four previous conferences held there.
Simonian, who held bilateral meetings with his Turkish and Azerbaijani counterparts in Istanbul, blamed Azerbaijan for the Turkish side’s continuing reluctance to implement the 2022 agreement.
“On the one hand, Azerbaijan negotiates with us,” he said. “On the other, it does not allow Turkey to negotiate with us. This is a strange situation. Turkey has become a prisoner of these relations [with Azerbaijan.]”
Successive Turkish governments have for decades made the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations conditional on a resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict acceptable to Baku.