MOSCOW, August 26 (RIA Novosti) - Armenia’s Foreign Minister will attend Turkish president-elect Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s inauguration ceremony, according to a statement from Armenia’s Foreign Ministry.
“Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian is going to visit Turkey in order to attend Turkish president-elect’s inauguration that will take place on August 28,” the statement said.
Earlier, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan revealed the Turkish invitation and said that his country’s representatives are likely to attend the ceremony.
Sargsyan also mentioned that Nalbandian would use this occasion to clarify whether Erdogan will accept Armenia’s invitation to take part in Yerevan commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the 1915 Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. The official ceremony will take place on April 24, 2015.
Turkey refuses to acknowledge the Armenian genocide.
No diplomatic relations exist between Turkey and Armenia, the Turkish-Armenian border has been closed since 1993.
The relations between the two countries are tense mainly because Turkey openly supports Azerbaijan’s position with regards to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
In 2008, the Armenian president initiated the process of diplomatic relations establishment between the two countries.
In 2009, the "Protocol on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations Between the Republic of Turkey and the Republic of Armenia" was signed by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his Armenian counterpart Eduard Nalbandian in the Swiss city of Zurich.
The same year, Erdogan froze the agreement and made it clear that Ankara would not establish diplomatic relations with Yerevan and open its borders before the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was resolved.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict evolved from the war of 1988-1994 between ethnic Azeri and Armenians who fought for the disputed lands of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. More than 35,000 people died in the war, but tensions in the region still remain.
