Turkey’s Agriculture Minister Ibrahim Yumakli visited Yerevan on Friday to participate in the latest UN Biodiversity Conference held there.
Yumakli, who is the first Turkish cabinet member to arrive in Armenia in more than a decade, met with Armenian Economy Minister Gevorg Papoyan on the sidelines of the COP17 forum.
“We discussed opportunities arising from the establishment of direct trade between Armenia and Turkey,” Papoyan said in a social media post. “We reviewed procedures for the transport and transit of goods subject to sanitary and veterinary control.”
Ankara continues to make the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border contingent on the signing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. It remains reluctant to implement a 2022 agreement to open the border to holders of Armenian and Turkish diplomatic passports and citizens of third countries. Yumakli signaled no change in this policy when he spoke to reporters in Yerevan.
“Turkey wants to see greater peace, tranquility and prosperity in the region, and, naturally, we are continuing this [normalization] process,” he said.
In his words, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s direct contacts with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian are giving new impetus to the process.
Erdogan and Pashinian most recently met in New York late last month on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. According to Pashinian’s office, the two leaders expressed readiness to “advance” Turkish-Armenian commercial ties.
The head of Turkey’s national electricity transmission network visited Armenia last week to discuss power supplies between the two neighboring countries. Other Turkish and Armenian officials met in the Turkish city of Kars in April this year for fresh talks on restoring a railway connecting them.