The last time Turkey’s border with Armenia was open, Bill Clinton was the US president and Boris Yeltsin was his Russian counterpart. Jurassic Park was packing movie theaters, and the iPhone was more than a decade away.
So any plan to restore ties between the two marks a historic moment. On June 8, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan expressed confidence that Armenia and Turkey would soon achieve full normalization of relations and that tangible progress had already been made.
This follows Turkey’s decision in May to lift restrictions on bilateral trade with Armenia. Previously, goods shipped from Turkey to Armenia were first registered as exports to a third country and then re-exported to Armenia. New regulations will allow goods to be sent from Turkey to Armenia through a third country and in the opposite direction; the final destination or point of export can now be designated as “Armenia/Turkey”.
Read the full article on the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Emil Avdaliani is a Research Fellow at the Turan Research Center.