Turkish president Erdogan to meet Armenian prime minister in Prague today
One of the most important meetings in the normalization process between Turkey and Armenia since the end of last year will take place today in Prague between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
The European Political Community, created at the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron, will hold its first meeting in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, the term president of the European Union, on 6-7 October.
In addition to 27 European Union countries, 17 other countries, including Turkey, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Armenia and the Balkan countries, will attend the meeting.
After the first plenary session to be held on October 6, time was allocated for the bilateral meetings of the leaders attending the meeting. In this context, one of the most remarkable and important meetings is expected to be between the leaders of Turkey and Armenia.
The most recent high-level talks between the two countries took place in 2008, when then-President Abdullah Gul went to Yerevan to watch the Turkey-Armenia football match, and then-Armenian President Serj Sargsyan came to the second match played in Bursa in 2009. The efforts at that time, called football diplomacy, resulted in the signing of two protocols aimed at establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries, opening the borders and improving bilateral relations, but the process could not be completed due to the intense reaction of Azerbaijan.
The meeting between the leaders of the two countries, which will take place 13 years later, will take place in a different framework.
The fact that Azerbaijan took back its lands in Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia in the war at the end of 2020 caused both the change of the 30-year status quo in the Caucasus region and the abolition of Baku's reaction to the normalization process between Ankara and Yerevan.
This situation is important as it shows that Erdoğan and Pashinyan will mainly deal with two main issues that concern the entire Caucasus.
The first issue on the agenda of the two leaders will naturally be the normalization process and the next steps to be taken.
