Informal exchange between Turkish, Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders at the Prague summit

ISTANBUL, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Turkish, Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders met informally on Thursday on the sidelines of the EU summit in Prague, Turkish media reported.

According to the Anadolu news agency, which published a photo of the three leaders, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev before the opening of the summit.

Turkey and Armenia, whose relations are historically strained, held a series of talks in January, the first in more than a decade, calling them “positive and constructive” and raising the prospect of restoring ties and of a reopening of the borders.

Ankara has had no diplomatic or commercial ties with Armenia since the 1990s. This latest initiative is the first attempt to normalize relations between the two countries since a 2009 peace agreement that was never ratified.

Tensions escalated during the 2020 war around the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkey, an ally of Azerbaijan, has accused Armenian forces, backed by Russia, of occupying land belonging to Azerbaijan, but then called for a rapprochement between the two countries, which have again clashed last month. (Report Daren Butler, French version Augustin Turpin, edited by Sophie Louet)