After the 2020 Karabakh war, the international community and the countries of the region began talking about steps to establish peace in the South Caucasus. Turkey, which had supported Azerbaijan in the war, called on Armenia to learn lessons from the conflict.

Last December, Armenia and Turkey appointed special envoys for normalizing relations. As of August, Armenian and Turkish envoys Ruben Rubinyan and Serdar Kılıç have already met four times. Following their most recent meeting, Armenia and Turkey agreed to open their border to citizens of third countries “at the earliest date possible,” in the biggest breakthrough in normalization efforts in many years.

CivilNet’s team traveled to Istanbul to learn more about what Armenians in Turkey think about the developments and to speak with Turkish political experts.