Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz will be in Yerevan, Armenia, on Monday to attend a summit of the European Political Community (EPC). Just another routine event for Yılmaz is another turning point in relations between Türkiye and Armenia. Yılmaz will be the first sitting vice president of Türkiye to visit Armenia, which has had virtually no diplomatic relations with neighboring Türkiye since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Armenia originally invited President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to the summit, according to the media reports. It would be the first visit to Yerevan by Erdoğan if the invitation was confirmed. Yet, it appears that normalizing the ties is also based on hierarchy. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan made his first visit to Türkiye last year and met Erdoğan. In 2008, Erdoğan’s predecessor, Abdullah Gül, became the first Turkish president to visit Armenia, in a bid to normalize ties, but this process eventually faded. After Azerbaijan’s victory over Armenia in Karabakh and with a peace deal in the works between the two foes, Türkiye joined its Caucasus ally and sought to speed up normalization, in parallel with Yerevan’s overture to Ankara to restore relations.
Fittingly, the theme of the European Political Community summit is “Building the Future: Unity and Stability in Europe.” On the fringes of Europe, both countries seek more integration with the continent through economic cooperation.
The EPC was set up in 2022 after the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in a move to reinforce unity and at the initiative of Emmanuel Macron, president of France, which hosts a sizeable Armenian diaspora. Almost all European countries will attend the summit, though German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is not expected to join.
The summits do not make decisions, but serve rather as an informal exchange between political leaders. The Armenian hosts aim to place energy security, economic development, security policy and strengthening democracy on the agenda at the one-day summit.
