Mount Ararat looms over the Armenian capital Yerevan from throughout the border in TürkiyeSaleem H. Ali
The signing of a peace settlement between Azerbaijan and Armenia within the Whitehouse on August 8, 2025, raises the query of whether or not an analogous peace deal may be signed with Armenia’s different antagonistic neighbor to the west. Armenia and Türkiye are usually not at battle, however they don’t have diplomatic relations and harbor immense disdain for one another owing to divergent interpretations of historical past. There are additionally some territorial disputes alongside the volcanic border area. Mount Ararat, which is inside Turkish borders, holds specific Biblical significance because the touchdown spot for Noah’s Ark.
For predominantly Christian Armenia, Mount Ararat can also be a nationwide image which figures prominently in native folklore and is seen on nationwide stamps and foreign money. But, the significance of a detente with its G20 neighbor is paramount for Armenia’s pragmatic President Nikol Pashinyan. He has been making an attempt to even change the way in which pure landmarks are perceived by the inhabitants to mitigate the atavistic contempt for Türkiye. As a substitute of Mount Ararat, he has promoted Mount Aragats, a dormant volcano inside Armenia and the nation’s highest mountain, as a brand new nationwide image thereby favoring a “naturalized” type of reconciliation.
Among the many numerous states that emerged from the demise of the Soviet Union, Armenia had essentially the most well-established diaspora. Owing to a historical past of marginalization and oppression from numerous neighboring powers, significantly within the earlier a part of the 20th century, Armenians fled their ethnic homeland in alarming numbers. The mass-killings of greater than 1,000,000 Armenians between 1915 to 1923 by Turks is acknowledged by notable scholarly organizations and twenty international locations as ‘genocide,’ and led to speedy migration throughout this era. Out of an estimated 11 million ethnic Armenians worldwide, solely 3 million truly reside in Armenia (about one-third of whom reside throughout the capital Yerevan), whereas the remainder are distributed primarily throughout Russia, the USA, France, Argentina, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Canada, Ukraine, Greece, and Australia.
For the small inhabitants of Armenians residing of their homeland, bettering the financial plight of the nation needs to be the foremost precedence. But the diaspora tends to be extra nationalistic and in addition holds appreciable energy by means of remittances and personal sector funding. President Pashinyan has been navigating this area fastidiously as his personal approval rankings are at underneath 20% (although he’s nonetheless deemed essentially the most trusted politician within the nation). In June, 2025 there was a historic assembly between the Armenian and Turkish presidents in Istanbul which was meant to pave the way in which for normalization, as soon as the battle with Azerbaijan was resolved.
Alongside the Armenian-Turkish border there was an extended historical past of environmental cooperation, significantly over water assets. My former doctoral pupil, Mehmet Altingoz, wrote a part of his dissertation on the hydrological cooperation between native communities alongside the border. This riparian cooperation was galvanized by a “friendship dam” constructed in the course of the Soviet period on the Akhuryan River. Sadly, this localized cooperation didn’t translate to any enchancment in relations between the 2 international locations after Armenian independence in 1991. Nonetheless, now that there’s momentum in the direction of peace on the nationwide degree, the localized cooperation might assist to quell opposition from hard-liners and exemplify alternatives for belief.
Armenia and Türkiye are each a part of the larger Black Sea drainage basin and are members of the Group of Black Sea Financial Cooperation (BSEC). The ecological imperatives which underpin the Black Sea area by way of fisheries, navigational entry, water high quality and potential for tourism improvement can all be enticing options to maneuver in the direction of peace. As President Trump considers his subsequent peace overture, the Armenian-Turkish detente is a pure subsequent step in each literal and figurative phrases.
