Turkey is not ready to give anything to Armenia

Another week in the South Caucasus region has once again vividly demonstrated the direct and inseparable dependence of the Armenian-Turkish normalization process on the course of the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement. This has become clear evidence that official Ankara will not take a single independent step toward Yerevan until Baku’s demands are fully met.

Synchronization as a tool of pressure

On Friday, November 28, 2025, two key negotiation sessions took place in the region, whose synchronization was far from accidental. In Gabala, Azerbaijan, Armenian Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan together with Deputy Foreign Minister Mnatsakan Safaryan held another meeting of border delimitation commissions with their Azerbaijani counterpart Shahin Mustafayev. At the same time, other representatives of Armenia’s Foreign Ministry and relevant agencies were in Turkey, discussing technical issues related to resuming the Kars-Gyumri railway route. This full synchronization of negotiation tracks is a key marker: Ankara perceives the unblocking of communications (which it itself closed) not as an independent process, but as a tool of pressure, fully aligned with the agenda dictated by Baku.

Turkey’s geopolitical choice and its price

Turkey has a critical economic and geopolitical interest in establishing a direct transport corridor through Armenia’s territory, which would connect it with Central Asian countries. Statements by several Turkish officials, primarily Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Abdulkadir Uraloglu, show Ankara’s strong interest in this route, since it would become an effective alternative to the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway line. As Uraloglu noted: “The Zangezur corridor will be an alternative to the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway. Opening the Zangezur corridor will increase freight traffic along the Middle Corridor from 1 million tons to 25 million tons per year.”

From a geopolitical standpoint, it is Turkey that should be making concessions to obtain this transit through Armenia’s territory. Armenia, in exchange for recognition of sovereignty—renunciation of the use of force or threats of force, and in exchange for decoupling the Armenian-Turkish process from the Armenian-Azerbaijani one—could allow Turkey to use communications on its territory on equal terms with other countries, as Iranian heavy trucks do, for example. However, Turkey chose another path: it unconditionally supported Azerbaijan in all its aggressive actions. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan personally confirmed Ankara’s direct involvement in the 44-day war of 2020, boasting that “in Azerbaijani Karabakh, together with our Azerbaijani brothers, we completely destroyed the enemy forces.” This support continued during the ethnic cleansing of 2023 and persists in all matters against Armenia, thereby achieving a conditional peace on terms unacceptable for Armenian security. Meanwhile, Nikol Pashinyan, who came to power in 2018, in this situation and process effectively performs the functions of a manager implementing the Turan project in Armenia, conceding sovereign interests for the sake of illusory normalization.

Risks of unilateral concessions and the path to balance

The synchronized meetings in Turkey and Azerbaijan prove that Ankara will not budge from its positions, and until Armenia fully satisfies the demands of official Baku, there can be no talk even of illusory normalization of relations with Turkey. Moreover, the demands declared by official Baku—from territorial claims to “enclaves” to requirements for constitutional changes—reflect nothing less than Azerbaijan’s desire to achieve Armenia’s complete and unconditional capitulation.

A process built on unilateral concessions carries existential risks for Armenia. Each concession only triggers a new, harsher round of demands and creates a dangerous precedent for legitimizing the use of military force.

Sustainable peace and preservation of Armenia’s statehood are possible only in one case: restoration of the military-political balance in the region. This requires immediate and decisive steps to involve other players interested in South Caucasus stability, such as Russia, Iran, and China. However, the current leadership in Yerevan demonstrates an inability to implement this key foreign policy shift, continuing to follow the course imposed by the Azerbaijani-Turkish agenda.

Think about it…