Armenia extended Türkiye a hand of friendship at this difficult time and demonstrated solidarity and cooperation, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said at a joint presser with his Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan in Ankara Wednesday.
He said Mirzoyan's visit to Türkiye, his second since March 2022, was "meaningful” as it follows last week's twin earthquakes that have so far claimed the lives of nearly 35,420 in the country.
The magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 tremors on Feb. 6 were centered in Kahramanmaraş province and struck nine other provinces – Hatay, Gaziantep, Adıyaman, Malatya, Adana, Diyarbakır, Kilis, Osmaniye, and Şanlıurfa. More than 13 million people in Türkiye have been affected by the devastating quakes.
Several countries in the region, as far as Lebanon and the island nation of Cyprus, also felt the strong tremors, with neighboring Syria taking the more significant damage after Türkiye as its death toll climbed above 5,791, with more than 14,749 injured.
Noting that Armenia sent a 28-person search and rescue team to Türkiye after the quakes, Çavuşoğlu said their efforts have continued in Adıyaman since Feb. 8.
"They sent 100 tons of humanitarian aid and said they would send additional aid," the minister highlighted, expressing his gratitude to the team for “working hard”, especially to save a little girl in Adıyaman.
“We have seen how happy they were while they were trying to rescue our citizens,” Çavuşoğlu noted.
Meanwhile, Mirzoyan expressed Armenia's willingness to build peace in these difficult times.
The top Armenian diplomat is expected to later visit Adıyaman, where the search and rescue team from his country continues to work.
The top diplomats are also hoping that the recent improvement in relations, namely the quake relief efforts, could help expedite the two nations’ plans for a formal normalization after decades of animosity.
Although they refrained from giving an exact timeline as talks to that end are still ongoing, both ministers said their governments are willing to fully restore ties, including the opening of the border, which indeed reopened for the first time in 30 years last week to facilitate the passage of humanitarian aid to the earthquake-stricken regions.
Five trucks carrying aid from Armenia crossed the border via the Alican checkpoint in eastern Türkiye's Iğdır province, which was also used in 1988, when a big earthquake hit Armenia, to send aid collected by the Turkish Red Crescent (Kızılay) to the affected areas.
Last year, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said Armenia wants to establish diplomatic ties with Türkiye without any precondition and officials on both sides agreed to open the land border for third-country citizens visiting both countries as soon as possible, according to the Foreign Ministry statement at the time.
In December 2021, the two nations appointed special envoys to help normalize relations, a year after Armenia lost to Türkiye’s ally Azerbaijan in the disputed Karabakh region.
In February 2022, Türkiye and Armenia resumed their first commercial flights after a two-year hiatus.
The two countries have been divided on a range of issues, including Armenia's occupation of the Karabakh region and the 1915 events during the Ottoman Empire era, and the border between the two neighboring countries has been closed since 1993.
