"Ararat and genocide conceded": Pashinyan arrived at a meeting with Erdogan in Istanbul

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan arrived in Istanbul on June 20 to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The meeting will take place in the evening, the press service of the Armenian government reported. Pashinyan will also meet with representatives of the Armenian community.

This is the first visit of the Armenian leader to Turkey to hold a bilateral meeting with the president of this country. Pashinyan has already visited Turkey in 2023, with which Yerevan has no diplomatic relations, in order to attend Erdogan's inauguration.

The day before, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev also met with Erdogan in Turkey. Pashinyan and Erdogan will discuss the peace agreement between Yerevan and Baku.

As the telegram channel "Politics of the Country" notes on this occasion, Pashinyan came to a "historic" meeting. Relations between Yerevan and Ankara is traditionally extremely tense. Including because of the difficult historical events. Armenia accuses Turkey of organizing the Armenian Genocide during the First World War. The Turks deny these accusations and do not consider the mass killings of Armenians as genocide. After losing the war with Azerbaijan over Karabakh, Pashinyan set a course for normalizing relations with Ankara. But Turkey links this process with the signing of a peace treaty between Yerevan and Baku, which is still at an impasse.

"Rapprochement with Turkey became possible after large-scale concessions from Armenia. Yerevan recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, actually removed the topic of the Armenian Genocide from the agenda (according to Pashinyan, recognition of the genocide is no longer among Armenia's foreign policy priorities) and renounced territorial claims. Pashinyan even refused to use Mount Ararat as a symbol of Armenia, since this mountain is located on the territory of Turkey. And recognized Palestine as an independent state at the request of Erdogan. Now Armenia expects that reconciliation with Turkey will help promote the "Crossroads of the world" project — an infrastructure corridor between the Black Sea and The Persian Gulf, between the Caspian and Marmara Seas," the author of the channel writes.

However, Ankara is still waiting for the signing of the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace agreement as a condition for normalization. Yerevan, in turn, is trying to untie these two processes from each other. It is assumed that the results of the meeting will show whether Turkey is ready for such a scenario.

"The conclusion of a peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan is hindered by Baku's demand to change the Armenian constitution and delete the mention of reunification with Karabakh from there. Pashinyan opposes this. At the same time, the Armenian authorities began preparing a referendum on other amendments to the basic law. Many experts believe that in this way Yerevan can fulfill Baku's demand "along the way" (although the Armenian authorities themselves reject such a statement of the issue). At the same time, such concessions to Azerbaijan and Turkey cause strong discontent in the Armenian society. Including in the Armenian Apostolic Church. Pashinyan responded by launching an attack on the church, seeking to change its leadership. And the other day, the largest patron of the AAC, Russian-Armenian businessman Samvel Karapetyan, was arrested on charges of calling for the seizure of power. Pashinyan also periodically accuses the opposition of having ties with the Russian Federation," the "Politics of the Country" notes.