Turkey, Armenia plan 2d round of talks on Feb. 24 in Vienna

ANKARA (Reuters) – Special envoys from Turkey and Armenia will hold a second round of talks on Feb. 24 in Vienna to normalise ties after decades of animosity, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

Last month, Turkey and Armenia held what both hailed as “positive and constructive” talks in Moscow, the first in more than a decade, raising hopes that diplomatic relations can be established and their land border – shut since 1993 – reopened. Turkey has had no diplomatic or commercial ties with its small eastern neighbour since the 1990s. The talks in Moscow were the first attempt to restore links since a 2009 peace accord that was never ratified.

Ankara has said it wants the normalisation talks to be held either in Turkey or Armenia after the first round. However, its foreign ministry said on Thursday the next meeting would be in Vienna, without elaborating. The two countries are at odds over several issues, primarily the 1.5 million people Armenia says were killed in a genocide by Ottoman Turkish forces in 1915.

Turkey accepts that many Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces during World War One, but contests the figures and denies the killings were systematic or constituted genocide. Turkey also backed its ally Azerbaijan against ethnic Armenian forces in a 2020 conflict which saw Baku regain swathes of land in the Nagorno-Karabakh territory. But Ankara has since called for a rapprochement between Baku and Yerevan.

As part of the normalisation process, Turkey and Armenia on Wednesday restarted commercial charter flights between Istanbul and Yerevan after two years.