President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday held a phone call with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on the occasion of the latter’s birthday.

The Turkish Presidency’s Directorate of Communications said in a statement that the two leaders discussed ties and the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Erdoğan expressed Türkiye’s commitment to achieving cooperation goals, especially in commerce, with Azerbaijan. The directorate said Erdoğan also told Aliyev that they were pleased with the momentum of the Azerbaijan-Armenia peace and reiterated Türkiye’s support for the process.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been embroiled in a decades-long conflict over the Karabakh region. In August 2025, Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint declaration on a peace treaty.

Türkiye itself doesn’t have ties with Armenia, but in parallel with Baku’s steps for peace, it started a normalization process with Yerevan. The two countries reiterated their determination to pursue normalization of ties without preconditions and agreed to speed up the process to open border crossings between the two neighbors, as special representatives for the normalization process, as they met for the sixth round of talks in September.