President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Armenian prime minister on Monday spoke over the phone and discussed the normalization process between their countries.
"Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Nikol Pashinyan emphasized the importance they attach to the bilateral normalization process between Turkey and Armenia, which will also contribute to the strengthening of peace and stability in the region," according to a Turkish presidency statement.
They also expressed their expectations for the immediate implementation of the issues agreed upon during the July 1 talks of the special representatives of the two countries.
In a Twitter post, Pashinyan said: "We expect early implementation of agreements reached in the meeting of our Special Representatives on July 1."
Erdoğan extended his greetings to Pashinyan on the upcoming Vardavar Festival, while the Armenian prime minister extended his greetings to the Turkish president on the Qurban Bayram, also known as Eid al-Adha.
The leaders of Armenia and Turkey pledged in a rare call to build on a nascent process aimed at normalizing travel, trade and diplomatic relations between the arch-foes.
The call came after Ankara and Yerevan on July 1 made a breakthrough during talks in Vienna where their diplomats agreed to open the countries' shared land border to third-country nationals and begin direct cargo flights.
"The leaders expressed hope that the agreements reached on July 1 will be implemented in the nearest future," the joint statement said.
Turkish Ambassador Serdar Kılıç and Armenian National Assembly Deputy Speaker Ruben Rubinyan, the special representatives for the normalization, held their fourth meeting in the Austrian capital of Vienna.
The Turkish and Armenian officials also "discussed other possible concrete steps that can be undertaken toward achieving the ultimate goal of full normalization between their respective countries," it added.
"Finally, they reemphasized their agreement to continue the normalization process without preconditions," the statement said.
The first round of normalization talks was held in Moscow on Jan. 14, where both parties agreed to continue negotiations without any preconditions, according to a statement released after that meeting.
The Turkish and Armenian envoys met for the second time in Vienna on Feb. 24, and the third meeting was held on May 3, also in the Austrian capital.
Also, a historic bilateral meeting took place between the foreign ministers of Turkey and Armenia on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum on March 12.
The two countries have never established formal diplomatic relations and their shared border has been closed since the 1990s.
But in December, the two countries appointed special envoys to help normalize relations, a year after Armenia lost to Turkey's ally Azerbaijan in a war for control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Azerbaijan used the help of Turkish combat drones to recapture most of the contested territory that had been under Armenian forces' control since the 1990s.
Azerbaijan's victory that ended the occupation of its Karabakh region, previously known as Nagorno-Karabakh, also helped pave the way for the normalization between Turkey and Armenia.
Relations between the two former Soviet countries of Azerbaijan and Armenia have been tense since 1991 when the Armenian military illegally occupied Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.
New clashes erupted on Sept. 27, 2020, and the 44-day conflict saw Azerbaijan liberate several cities and over 300 settlements and villages that were occupied by Armenia for almost three decades.
In February, Turkey and Armenia resumed their first commercial flights in two years.
The land border between the two countries has remained closed since 1993 however, forcing trucks to transit through Georgia or Iran.
Ankara has been mending ties with several regional countries and has emphasized the need for enhanced cooperation, within this scope steps were also taken with Armenia, particularly following the latest Karabakh war between Baku and Yerevan.
Since then, both Russia and Azerbaijan have voiced support for closer ties between Turkey and Armenia, which is seen within the sphere of regional normalization.
