Türkiye-Armenia: A Fallen Berlin Wall

The history of international relations has repeatedly shown that closing borders and building artificial walls of hostility between neighboring peoples more often serves the strategic interests of powers outside the region than the people of that geography itself. The roughly century-long political rupture between Turks and Armenians — who for centuries shared the same civilizational basin, the same cities and similar cultural codes — has become a significant obstacle limiting not only relations between the two peoples but the economic, political and geostrategic potential of Anatolia and the South Caucasus as well.

Today, developing a vision that targets not merely diplomatic normalization between Türkiye and Armenia but long-term economic, political and cultural integration can be seen as more than an ordinary foreign-policy preference — it can be regarded as a strategic paradigm shift with the potential to affect the balance of power across Eurasia. Such a rapprochement could strengthen regional stability and economic development, while also creating a new balance that could reduce the influence of outside actors who have long made the South Caucasus an arena of competing influence.

This approach is not entirely foreign to history, either. Europe’s founding process shows that states that once fought destructive wars against each other can build a shared future on the basis of common interest. France and Germany, having fought each other repeatedly for centuries and lost millions in both World Wars, founded the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, turning the raw materials of war into instruments of economic cooperation and laying the foundation of the integration process that became today’s European Union. This example points not to forgetting historical memory entirely, but to placing a shared future ahead of past conflicts.

The historical relationship between Turks and Armenians, too, is too long and too layered to be read solely through conflict. Living within the same political structure for centuries under the Seljuk and Ottoman periods, the two communities built intense interaction in trade, craft, urban culture and daily life. Armenians being long referred to in the Ottoman Empire as the “Millet-i Sadıka” (loyal community) is one reflection of this shared experience in historical memory. This past does not, of course, erase the suffering and disputes that occurred; but it shows that the two communities cannot be defined by conflict alone, and that a shared historical ground exists as well. A possible rapprochement, therefore, may mean not building an entirely new partnership from scratch, but reinterpreting a past experience of coexistence under contemporary conditions.

A deepening integration between Türkiye and Armenia could also significantly affect regional geopolitics. For years, security balances in the South Caucasus have largely rested on mutual threat perceptions. A durable normalization of relations could transform the security architecture and reduce dependence on outside actors. In particular, Armenia developing comprehensive relations with Türkiye could produce new options that reduce the importance of the Moscow-centered security order. Likewise, progress in Türkiye-Armenia relations could change the function that historical disputes have long played as an agenda item in various European countries’ politics and in diaspora politics. Two neighboring states being able to hold direct dialogue could open more room for problems to be resolved between regional actors rather than through third parties.

That said, the most tangible results of such a rapprochement would likely appear in the economic sphere. Transport links between Türkiye, Armenia and Azerbaijan becoming fully functional could increase the capacity of the Middle Corridor running from China to Europe and raise the South Caucasus’s importance in global logistics networks. Armenia could overcome its long-standing transport and trade constraints and gain the chance to become a regional transit hub. Likewise, trade relations built between Türkiye’s eastern Anatolian provinces and the Armenian economy — border trade, joint industrial zones, agricultural production, tourism and transport investment — could generate economic activity on both sides. As economic interdependence grows, political stability becoming more likely also grows more plausible.

Yet lasting peace can be supported not only by economic interest but by social and cultural rapprochement too. Cuisine, music, architecture, daily-life practices and a shared vocabulary shaped over centuries in the same geography still carry traces of historical bonds felt by both communities today. Taking the pain of the past out of being a permanent instrument of political rivalry, and addressing it instead within a framework of shared understanding and commemoration, could contribute to social healing for both peoples. The sound of a duduk meeting the timbre of a bağlama within the same cultural event at the ruins of Ani or at Akdamar is not merely an artistic symbol; it can also be an expression of the renewed strengthening of a shared awareness of history and geography.

In light of all these geostrategic and civilizational dynamics, building a comprehensive economic, political and cultural partnership between Türkiye and Armenia would mean more than normalizing relations between two states. Such a vision carries the potential to turn the future of the South Caucasus from a geopolitical arena shaped by outside rivalries into a regional cooperation basin capable of resolving its own problems by its own will. Mutual trust and economic integration developing along the Ankara-Yerevan-Baku axis would not merely increase trade volume; it could also lay the foundation of a new civilizational perspective that strengthens regional stability, raises prosperity, and aims to overcome historical ruptures. Such a future can be built not by denying the past, but through a rational political will that learns from it and prioritizes shared interests.

This article was first published on 18 July 2026 in Bursa Hakimiyet.