Star Metro - Armenia PM arrives in Turkey for 'historic' visit

Armenia and Turkey have never established formal diplomatic ties, and their shared border has been closed since the 1990s.

"Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has arrived in Turkey on a working visit," his spokeswoman Nazeli Baghdasaryan said on Facebook.

The visit follows an invitation from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom Pashinyan is scheduled to meet at Istanbul's Dolmabahce Palace at 1500 GMT, Erdogan's office said.

Relations between the two nations have been historically strained over the World War I-era mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire -- atrocities Yerevan says amount to genocide. Turkey rejects the label.

Ankara has also backed its close ally, Turkic-speaking Azerbaijan, in its long-running conflict with Armenia.

"This is a historic visit, as it will be the first time a head of the Republic of Armenia visits Turkey at this level. All regional issues will be discussed," Armenian parliament speaker Alen Simonyan told reporters.

"The risks of war (with Azerbaijan) are currently minimal, and we must work to neutralise them. Pashinyan's visit to Turkey is a step in that direction."

An Armenian foreign ministry official told AFP the pair will discuss efforts to sign a comprehensive peace treaty as well as the regional fallout from the Iran-Israel conflict.

On Thursday, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was in Turkey for talks with Erdogan and praised the Turkish-Azerbaijani alliance as "a significant factor, not only regionally but also globally."

And Erdogan repeated his backing for "the establishment of peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia".

Baku and Yerevan agreed on the text of a peace deal in March, but Baku has since outlined a host of demands -- including changes to Armenia's constitution -- before it will sign the document.

- Normalisation -

Pashinyan has actively sought to normalise relations with both Baku and Ankara.

Earlier this year, he announced Armenia would halt its campaign for international recognition of the 1915 mass killings of Armenians as genocide -- a major concession to Turkey that sparked widespread criticism at home.

Pashinyan has visited Turkey only once before, for Erdogan's inauguration in 2023. At the time he was one of the first foreign leaders to congratulate the Turkish president on his re-election.

Ankara and Yerevan appointed special envoys in late 2021 to lead a normalisation process, a year after Armenia's defeat in a war with Azerbaijan over then then-disputed Karabakh region.

In 2022, Turkey and Armenia resumed commercial flights after a two-year pause.

A previous attempt to normalise relations -- a 2009 accord to open the border -- was never ratified by Armenia and was abandoned in 2018.

F.T. Michaud--SMC