Armenia announced Thursday that it would lift its one-year embargo on Turkish products from January 1, a new gesture in favor of the normalization of its historically strained relations with Ankara.
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These reports are strained due to Turkey’s non-recognition of the Armenian genocide under the Ottoman Empire and, more recently, its support for Azerbaijan during a war against Armenia last year. But after years of tensions, the two countries, whose common border has been closed for almost three decades, have multiplied in recent weeks the gestures of appeasement, the latest being the announcement of the lifting of the embargo. “It was decided not to extend the embargo on the importation of Turkish products into our country”, a measure that expires on Friday, the Armenian Ministry of Economy said in a statement on Thursday. “We hope (…) that by virtue of the principle of reciprocity, favorable conditions will be put in place to allow the export of Armenian products” in Turkey, he added.
Normalize relationships
Other signs of appeasement preceding this announcement, Turkish and Armenian airlines had submitted requests for authorization for charter flights and, above all, Ankara and Yerevan had appointed, in mid-December, emissaries to normalize their relations. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu said Thursday that the two envoys would likely meet in January in Moscow, therefore on neutral ground, as Russia has good relations with both Turkey and Armenia. “This first meeting will be important”, underlined Mevlüt Cavusoglu in a television interview, believing that the efforts of Armenia to improve its relations with its country were the proof of its “good intentions”. However, he relativized the importance of the end of the Armenian embargo, believing that it was not “Anyway not applied”.
“Auspicious atmosphere”
For Hakob Badalyan, an Armenian political scientist, this announcement from Yerevan is above all a symbolic gesture of goodwill before the first meeting of the two emissaries and the start of negotiations. “Armenia wants to create an atmosphere conducive to dialogue”, he told AFP.
The Yerevan embargo on Turkish products was put in place on January 1, 2021 to punish Ankara for its support for Azerbaijan in the war against Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh in the fall. 2020. This conflict, which left more than 6,500 dead, ended in a heavy defeat for Armenia, forced to cede to Baku several regions forming a glacis around Nagorny-Karabakh, a territory mostly populated by Armenians and having seceded from Azerbaijan after the fall of the USSR thirty years ago. During last year’s war, Turkey notably supplied armed drones to Azerbaijan.
Conflict over the recognition of the genocide
However, observers are wondering about the chances of a short-term normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia, neighbors with long-standing disputes and who have never officially established diplomatic relations. These two countries had already signed an agreement in 2009 to standardize their relations. Supposed to lead to the opening of their common border, the document was never ratified by Yerevan, which abandoned the procedure in 2018.
The main obstacle that stands between them remains Ankara’s refusal to recognize as genocide the massacres of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Many historians qualify these killings as genocide, recognized as such by the governments or parliaments of many countries, including the United States, France and Germany. The number of Armenians who then died is estimated at between 600,000 and 1.5 million. But Turkey, resulting from the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire in 1920, rejects this term and evokes a civil war, coupled with a famine, in which 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians and as many Turks perished.