Garo Paylan, a Turkish-Armenian lawmaker from the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), has weighed in on the potential Armenia-Turkey rapprochement, maintaining that there are two ways out of the situation created after the Second Karabakh War: to resume the war or to think about reconciliation.
Paylan said in an interview with Factor.am that the main precondition in the normalization of relations is having open borders: "Without opening the borders, it is impossible to start a normalization process."
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared recently that Ankara is ready to gradually normalize relations with Yerevan. Erdogan's comments came after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan weighed in on regional peace earlier, maintaining that "public positive signals" are coming from Turkey. Pashinyan said the Armenian side will assess those signals and respond in kind.
"I am glad to see that the sides are thinking about launching a rapprochement process. They should think about normalizing relations in order to overcome traumas sustained in the war," Paylan noted.
According to him, Turkish authorities really want to start such a process as Erdogan seeks to change the international community's perception of Ankara. Turkey, he said, has problems in Cyprus, Syria, Iraq, Libya and other areas of the world, and now it has a regional peace project to tell the world about.
"Erdogan sees South Caucasus as a story to show to the world that Turkey is working for peace," Paylan said.
The lawmaker also said Armenians have several reasons to not trust Turkey, which threw its weight behind Azerbaijan during the 44-day war in fall 2020.
