Armenia-Turkey Border opens for Humanitarian Assistance to Earthquake-Hit Adiyaman

Armenian Trucks pass over the Armenian-Turkish border (via Twitter)

In what could possibly prove to be a milestone in relations between the Republics of Armenia and Turkey, Yerevan today sent five trucks carrying 100 tons of humanitarian assistance to its neighbour following last week’s devastating earthquake. The aid was destined for the southeastern Turkish city of Adiyaman.

At time of writing, the number of fatalities from the tragedy, which reached a magnitude of 7.8,  has already surpassed 21,000 with over 80,000 injured. A state of emergency in Turkey has been declared.

Crossing from Margara to Alican in Turkey, it was the first time this particular border crossing in Armenia, one of two that have long existed, had been used in over three decades. Some media reported that the last time it had been used was in 1988 when the Turkish Red Crescent sent aid to Armenia following the devastating Spitak earthquake in then Soviet Armenia.

It also follows Yerevan’s decision to send a team of 27 rescue and medical staff earlier in the week and a telephone call between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan held on 7 February. Pashinyan offered condolences to his Turkish counterpart while Erdoğan welcomed Armenia’s support. 

As almost everyone knows, Armenia and Turkey do not have diplomatic relations and the land border has been closed since the early 1990s because of the war with Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh. Passenger flights  between Yerevan and Istanbul, however, have long existed while Ankara gave the green light for Armenia-Turkey cargo flights to be launched last month.

 Though Armenia has offered earthquake aid to Turkey before, including under the leaderships of Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, the opening of the border, even temporarily, this weekend takes on greater significance and symbolism given renewed efforts to normalise relations since the 2020 Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan ended.

It was therefore of no surprise to see Armenian and Turkish government officials tweet news of this development, and not least by the two special envoys from both countries appointed for that task, Rubin Rubinyan and Serdar Kılıç. There were already plans to partially open the border for citizens of third countries in the near future anyway.

Though the severity of the earthquake in Turkey should not overshadow the significance of even temporarily opening the land border with Armenia, the move does nonetheless indicate that a long-awaited normalisation of relations between Yerevan and Ankara could be drawing ever closer. Certainly, the delivery of humanitarian assistance was coordinated by both.

Moreover, the move perhaps also serves the purpose of gauging the reaction of the populations of both countries ahead of further progress towards a full opening of the border and the long-awaited establishment of diplomatic relations between the two. For now, the optics of delivering and receiving humanitarian assistance serves Yerevan and Ankara well.

Although there have been delays in the process that started over a year ago, and not least because of disagreements between Armenia and Azerbaijan in their normalisation process, it can only be hoped that it fare better than the ill-fated Zurich Protocols in 2009. Back then, I did a lot fixing and coordinating for the BBC, Al Jazeera English, and the Wall Street Journal.

Some, but not all, of my posts on Armenia-Turkey normalisation can be found here.