Yerevan and Ankara have agreed to expedite the opening of border crossings in line with the agreement reached in July 2022.
The relevant discussions were held during the sixth meeting between Turkey’s Special Envoy for normalisation with Armenia, Serdar Kılıç, and his Armenian counterpart Ruben Rubinyan on Friday in Yerevan.
According to the Armenian readout of the meeting, the sides agreed to implement necessary work “for other interested companies to start flights to various destinations starting in the summer of 2026”, which will work towards increasing the number of flights between the two countries.
The parties “also decided that efforts should be made to strengthen cooperation in the field of culture and academia, particularly by creating scholarship opportunities for higher education students and the joint renovation of the historical Ani/Silk Road bridge.”
The agreement to allow the crossing of the land border between Armenia and Turkey by third-country citizens was reached during the special representatives’ fourth meeting in Vienna in July 2022. The two sides also agreed to open air cargo transportation back then.
The latest such meeting was held on July 2024 on the Margara–Alican crossing on the border of the two countries. Armenian and Turkish envoys have been meeting since January 2022 when the two countries decided to normalize political ties and open the borders that have remained closed since 1993 during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Turkey’s close ally Azerbaijan.
