Turkish and Armenian diplomats will meet on July 30 on the Armenia-Turkey border, the Foreign Ministries of the two countries said on July 29 amid efforts to normalize relations.
It will be the fifth meeting of special representatives of Yerevan and Baku since they were appointed in December 2021 to advance the normalization process.
The meeting will see the envoys discuss "confidence-building measures that could be developed between the two countries," Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said, according to AFP.
At their last meeting in Vienna, the parties agreed to open the land border for citizens of third countries, but there has been no progress on implementation.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on July 26 visited the Margara (Alican in Turkish) border crossing, which Yerevan recently renovated in hopes of a breakthrough.
Armenia has said Yerevan seeks full normalization of relations with Ankara, including the opening of their border and the establishment of diplomatic ties.
The border has been shut since diplomatic relations between the two neighbors were severed in 1993 over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave in Azerbaijan that until September 2023 was populated predominantly by ethnic Armenians. Azerbaijan and Armenia fought wars in the 1990s and in 2023 over control of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Baku recaptured Nagorno-Karabakh in a lightning offensive in September 2023 that led to the exodus of all Armenians from the territory.
Beyond Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia and Turkey disagree on whether the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire more than 100 years ago was a genocide.
Turkey has vehemently rejected that the killings and deaths that began on April 24, 1915, with mass arrests of Armenian intellectuals and activists in Constantinople, now Istanbul, constituted a genocide.
In recent years about three dozen countries, including Russia, France, Germany, and the United States, have recognized it as genocide.
Pashinian has urged Armenians to "overcome the trauma" of the massacre and stop yearning for their "lost homeland."
Speaking on April 24 at an event to mark the anniversary of the start of the 1915 events, Pashinian said the enduring trauma prevents many Armenians from objectively assessing international affairs and the challenges facing Armenia.