Yerevan sees no steps on Turkey's part to open border - parliament deputy speaker

YEREVAN, 11 June. /ARKA/. The Armenian side does not see any steps on the part of Turkey to open the border yet, Parliament Deputy Speaker, Armenia's special representative for talks with Ankara Ruben Rubinyan said on Tuesday.br

He added that Yerevan hopes that the agreements reached earlier will be fulfilled.nbsp; According to him, Armenia has done everything for the opening of the Margara checkpoint. All the infrastructure, as Rubinyan noted, is already ready. He disagreed with the statements about the absence of meetings and dialogue.nbsp;br

The foreign ministers of the two countries met relatively recently - at the end of February 2024. It happened on the margins of the diplomatic forum in Antalya,’ Rubinyan told reporters in parliament.nbsp;br

Earlier it was reported that Armenia completed the overhaul of the Margara checkpoint on the Armenian-Turkish border.nbsp;br

Although Turkey was one of the first countries to recognize Armenia’s independence from the former Soviet Union, the countries have no diplomatic ties and Turkey shut down their common border in 1993, in a show of solidarity with Azerbaijan which was locked in a conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.br

Turkey also refuses to recognize the Armenian genocide, committed during 1915-1923 when an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were massacred by the Ottoman government. The overwhelming majority of historians widely view the event as genocide.br

In 2020, Turkey strongly backed Azerbaijan in the six-week conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh which ended with a Russia-brokered peace deal that saw Azerbaijan gain control of a significant part of Nagorno-Karabakh. -0-br