Turkey and Armenia will resume trade relations via a third country as part of rapprochement between the two nations, Turkish foreign ministry spokesman said on Wednesday.
“Within the framework of our normalisation process with Armenia that has been ongoing since 2022 … the bureaucratic preparations regarding the initiation of direct trade between our country and Armenia have been completed as of May 11,” foreign ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli announced on X.
Under the new regulation, the origin and final destination of goods can now be listed as Turkey and Armenia, even though trade will continue to transit through a third country due to the lack of a functional border crossing.
“The necessary technical and bureaucratic work toward opening the common border between the two countries is still ongoing,” the spokesman said.
In practice, trade between the two countries is already taking place on both sides, notably via Georgia.
The latest announcement marks a new step toward normalisation between Ankara and Yerevan after Azerbaijan’s seizure of Karabakh, which saw most of the Armenian population leave.
Last month, they decided to put the Kars-Gyumri railway line back into service on both sides of the border.
Turkey’s national carrier, Turkish Airlines, operated its first direct flight between Istanbul and Yerevan in March.
But the two sides remain divided.
The Armenians say 1.5 million of their people were killed under the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1917 and seek international recognition that it was genocide.
Turkey strongly denies the accusation of genocide and disputes the numbers, saying that the Armenians were among hundreds of thousands of people who died in the turmoil of World War I as the Ottoman Empire disintegrated.
Add Comment