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Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on June 20 in what appears to be the most consequential bilateral contact since the two countries began tentative normalization efforts more than two years ago.
The meeting occurred at Dolmabahce Palace, an Ottoman-era building designed by the Armenian Balyan architect family members—a symbolically loaded venue for a rare dialogue.
Speaking to reporters following the meeting, Pashinyan said that Armenia “does not see Türkiye as a threat, and Armenia is not a threat to Türkiye,” adding that he intends to invite Erdogan to visit Yerevan.
The visit comes when both Ankara and Yerevan are recalibrating their regional strategies.
For Armenia, engagement with Türkiye offers a potential exit from a prolonged period of isolation and strategic dependence on Russia as its other regional partner, Iran, enters a blind valley.
For Türkiye, normalizing ties with its eastern neighbor aligns with its broader efforts to expand regional transit routes and reshape supply chains.
https://x.com/NikolPashinyan/status/1936109940332195961
The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which ended with a Russian-brokered cease-fire that heavily favored Baku, dealt a political and strategic shock to Yerevan. Azerbaijan, backed by Türkiye, regained large swaths of territory.
Pashinyan came under intense domestic criticism but retained power through early elections in 2021.
Since then, Azerbaijan has further consolidated control in the region, while Russia’s standing as a regional guarantor has weakened amid its deepening entanglement in Ukraine.
Armenia’s foreign policy, long anchored in Moscow’s orbit, has begun tilting westward, both out of necessity and calculation. Yerevan’s current pivot also includes outreach to Türkiye, where the potential dividends are seen as both economic and strategic.
This foreign policy reset has required Armenia’s leadership to take politically risky steps, breaking with long-held narratives both domestically and within the influential diaspora.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has publicly underlined this shift, stating that he is “not the representative of world Armenians,” but rather of the Republic of Armenia.
In seeking a way out of Armenia’s strategic deadlock, the government has engaged in normalization efforts despite internal resistance, betting on regional reintegration as a national interest.
The “Crossroads of Peace” initiative reflects this bold repositioning and has come to symbolize a new vision.
First outlined in late 2023, Armenia’s “Crossroads of Peace” proposal has become the centerpiece of Yerevan’s regional outreach, especially as a link to Europe.
The plan envisions reactivating existing infrastructure and establishing new border crossings with Türkiye and Azerbaijan.
Yerevan has framed the initiative as a platform for regional interconnectivity based on mutual sovereignty, rather than a geopolitical concession.
The plan includes reopening five land checkpoints along the Azerbaijani border and two with Türkiye.
Armenia has pledged to respect all states’ jurisdiction and territorial integrity, rejecting the idea of extraterritorial corridors—a thinly veiled reference to previous proposals by Baku for a Zangezur corridor under Azerbaijani control.
The initiative reflects a shift in Armenian thinking: by offering transit and cooperation, Yerevan seeks not only to unlock economic opportunity but also to redefine its role in a region long shaped by zero-sum logic.
For Ankara, improved ties with Armenia serve more than diplomatic symbolism. Türkiye is pushing to become a central hub in Eurasian trade, particularly through the so-called Middle Corridor—a logistics network connecting Türkiye with Central Asia and China via the South Caucasus. While the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway currently provides a functional route, geopolitical pressures and logistical bottlenecks have underscored the need for redundancy.
Ankara’s recently announced Kars-Igdir-Dilucu railway project is part of this push. But the proposed 224-kilometer line would take several years to complete and require substantial investment.
In contrast, improved relations with Armenia may offer a quicker, more cost-effective alternative: by upgrading dormant Soviet-era rail segments, Türkiye could gain access to Nakhchivan and Central Asia without building new lines from scratch.
Moreover, opening trade corridors via Armenia allows Ankara to exert subtle but sustained economic influence, fostering a degree of dependency on Turkish markets and infrastructure. This would serve Türkiye’s long-term interests in shaping the South Caucasus order.
However, so far, Türkiye has strongly backed the proposed Zangezur Corridor as a strategic component of broader Eurasian connectivity.
Yerevan has refused to allow the corridor under the conditions proposed by Baku, arguing that Azerbaijan seeks extraterritorial control—an assertion Azerbaijan denies.
For Baku, the primary concern is the long-term security and reliability of transit through Armenian territory.
Given the absence of binding legal guarantees or third-party oversight, questions remain over the corridor’s sustainability. Without internationally recognized safeguards, a change of government in Armenia could reverse access, placing invested infrastructure at risk and undermining confidence in regional projects.
But Armenian officials say they are open to working directly with Türkiye on project implementation.
This includes joint tenders, co-managed construction, and full transparency—a model that Ankara may find preferable to unilateral project management in a politically sensitive region.
Normalization between Armenia and Türkiye will ultimately require more than meetings and infrastructure blueprints.
Decades of hostility, unresolved historical grievances, and nationalist sentiment—particularly within Armenia—remain formidable obstacles.
Yet trade may serve as a pragmatic entry point. Economic interdependence could soften public attitudes over time and reduce resistance to political compromise.
“The Crossroads of Peace is not a barrier to the Turan route,” Pashinyan said recently, referring to Türkiye’s pan-Turkic integration project. “If there’s a waterway, we can all drink from it.”
The remarks indicate that Armenia is signaling openness, not necessarily ideological alignment, but a willingness to engage pragmatically in regional cooperation.
A successful normalization process would also benefit from a longer-term societal roadmap, including potential reforms to education and public discourse. Future agreements may need to address textbooks, joint commissions, and other cultural instruments that shape generational narratives.
While obstacles remain, the latest meeting in Istanbul signals that both Ankara and Yerevan are willing to test the waters of normalization more seriously than before.
For Türkiye, opening trade corridors via Armenia allows Ankara to exert subtle but sustained economic influence, fostering a degree of dependency on itself. For Armenia, the stakes are even higher.
The tools for a limited breakthrough—trade, transport, and mutual need—now appear to be already on the table.
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