Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov reiterated Türkiye and Azerbaijan’s dedication to ensure permanent peace and stability in the South Caucasus region, as the two countries strive to revive relations with Armenia.
The two top diplomats held talks in the capital Ankara on several sticking issues including ongoing peace negotiations between Baku and Yerevan.
“In our meeting today, we reaffirmed our common desire for lasting peace and stability to be established in the South Caucasus as soon as possible,” Fidan said at a news conference with Bayramov.
“In this context, we evaluated the progress made in the ongoing peace process between Azerbaijan and Armenia,” he said.
The Caucasus rivals fought two wars – in the 1990s and in 2020 – over control of Nagorno-Karabakh, which had been occupied by Armenian separatists for three decades.
Years of diplomacy between the Caucasus rivals Azerbaijan and Armenia had failed to reach a breakthrough, but negotiations have resumed after Baku last year won a decisive victory in liberating Karabakh.
In July, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Armenia and Azerbaijan were on the brink of an agreement for a “dignified” peace as he brought the arch-foes’ foreign ministers together for talks on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Washington.
Bayramov said Tuesday that Baku’s 2023 victory over Nagorno-Karabakh generated a new reality as well as new opportunities in the Caucasus.
Azerbaijan recaptured the mountainous enclave in an anti-terrorism operation.
“Azerbaijan believes that there’s a historic chance for lasting peace in the region,” he said.
Türkiye, a close ally of Azerbaijan, backed its campaign to liberate Karabakh from Armenian occupation.
Diplomatic relations between Türkiye and Armenia were severed over a number of issues, including the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
The Ankara talks come on the heels of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Baku last week, his first to the oil-rich country since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Last month, Ankara and Yerevan affirmed their commitment to normalization in their fifth meeting. Turkish and Armenian officials met on the border for the fifth round of their normalization talks, and the two neighbors agreed to continue the process without any preconditions.
Russia has for decades been a traditional mediator between Baku and Yerevan but has in the last two years been bogged down by its Ukraine campaign.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan have reiterated political will to normalize ties in a phone call in June. They confirmed the issues the two countries reached a settlement on, as they highlighted the importance of maintaining talks between the special representatives of the two neighboring countries. They also welcomed the dialogue between senior officials of both countries and discussed recent developments in the region and the international agenda.
