Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, on the sidelines of their participation in the European Political Group Summit in Prague, today, Thursday, Turkish Ambassador Agmen Bagis announced in the Czech capital.
In a statement to the official Anadolu Agency, Bagis said that this summit will be the first of its kind, since the start of the ongoing dialogue between Turkey, Azerbaijan and Armenia, to conclude a permanent peace agreement.
Pictures published by the Turkish presidency showed a joint dialogue of the leaders of Turkey, France, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Hungary, before the start of the meeting of the political group.
On Wednesday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced - in a speech to Parliament - that he will hold a bilateral meeting with the Turkish President, and he will also participate in a four-way meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, French President Emmanuel Macron and European Council President Charles Michel, in the wake of The recent bloody clashes between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces.
Last September, the latest round of fighting in the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region killed more than 280 people, raising fears of a new major war between the two countries.
Following regional and international mediation, the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met in Geneva a few days ago to start drafting a proposed text for a future peace treaty.
For its part, the American "Bloomberg" network said that the planned talks between Erdogan and Pashinyan represented the first direct meeting between the leaders of the two countries in 13 years, in an attempt to establish normal diplomatic relations between the two countries and "overcome a legacy of hostility," noting Yerevan's allegations. The Armenians were exterminated by the Ottoman forces in 1915.