Turkey and Armenia to begin talks to normalize ties

Special envoys from Turkey and Armenia will meet for the first time in Moscow on Jan. 14 for talks to try and normalize ties between the longtime foes, the foreign ministries of both countries said Wednesday.

The meeting comes more than two months after President Joe Biden urged Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a meeting in Rome to work toward establishing diplomatic ties with landlocked Armenia and opening the countries’ shared border, according to previous comments by a senior Turkish official.

Turkey shut the frontier in 1993 in solidarity with its ally Azerbaijan, which was fighting a war with Armenia over the contested territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Turkey moves to normalize Armenia ties in bid to please Biden

Special envoys Serdar Kilic, a former Turkish ambassador to the US, and Armenia’s deputy parliament speaker Ruben Rubinyan are expected to work on a roadmap that will cover a series of confidence-building measures, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said last week.

Armenia lifted an embargo on Turkish goods on Jan. 1, and the sides have agreed to restart direct charter flights soon.