“Armenia accepts Azerbaijan’s proposals regarding the two previously unresolved articles of the draft” peace agreement, the Armenian foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that “negotiations on the draft agreement have been concluded” and “the Peace Agreement is ready for signing.”Armenian and Azerbaijani officials have said that they had agreed on the text of a peace agreement to end nearly four decades of conflict between the South Caucasus countries, a sudden breakthrough in a fitful and often bitter peace process.
The two post-Soviet countries have fought a series of wars since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in Azerbaijan that had a mostly ethnic Armenian population at the time, broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia.
Armenia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday that a draft peace agreement with Azerbaijan had been finalised from its side.
“The peace agreement is ready for signing. The Republic of Armenia is ready to start consultations with the Republic of Azerbaijan on the date and place of signing the agreement,” Armenia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
In its statement, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said: “We note with satisfaction that the negotiations on the text of the draft Agreement on Peace and the Establishment of Interstate Relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia have been concluded.”
However, the timeline for signing the deal is uncertain as Azerbaijan has said a prerequisite for its signature is a change to Armenia’s constitution, which it says makes implicit claims to its territory.
Armenia denies such claims, but Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said repeatedly in recent months that the country’s founding document needs to be replaced and has called for a referendum to do so. No date has been set.
The outbreak of hostilities in the late 1980s prompted mass expulsions of hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim Azeris from Armenia and Armenians, who are majority Christian, from Azerbaijan.
Peace talks began after Azerbaijan retook Karabakh by force in September 2023, prompting almost all of the territory’s 100,000 Armenians to flee to Armenia. Both sides had said they wanted to sign a treaty to end the long-running conflict, but progress has been slow and relations tense.
The two countries’ 1,000km (621-mile) shared border is closed and heavily militarised.
In January, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev accused Armenia of posing a “fascist” threat that needed to be destroyed, in comments that Armenia’s leader called a possible attempt to justify fresh conflict.
Three hundred Turkish intellectuals signed a petition asking Armenia for forgiveness, among them Ahmet Insel, a professor at Galatasaray University.
"This was a genocide and a crime against humanity," he says, standing outside the Islamic Arts museum in Istanbul, the site where the first Armenians were rounded up.
"Turkey has a moral obligation to recognise it as such, so as to become a civilised modern democracy."He says he does not expect formal recognition within the next 10 years.
"The charge of genocide could mean Armenians claim financial compensation from Turkey - that's one factor holding it back."
The current government has slowly moved forward on the issue, returning some confiscated properties to Armenians.
And, last year, the then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan - now President - offered his "condolences" to families of the victims, calling the killings "inhumane".
It was the furthest a political leader had gone in Turkey, but was rejected by Armenia for dodging the word "genocide".In the run-up to the centenary, the rhetoric has again hardened.
When Pope Francis said two weeks ago that Armenians had suffered "the first genocide of the 20th Century" Mr Erdogan hit back, saying he "condemned" the Pope, warning him not to "repeat the mistake".
Partly the president is shoring up core nationalist votes ahead of an election in June. But partly too, Turkey, which cares so much for its prestige and strongman image, recoils at a word linked with Rwanda, Srebrenica and Auschwitz.
Perhaps no clearer example of the reluctance to mark the killings will come on the anniversary itself, when Turkey will instead lavishly commemorate 100 years since the Gallipoli campaign: the victory of Ottoman forces over invading Allied troops.
It is never remembered on 24 April but this year the ceremony will fall on that day - critics say to overshadow the Armenian anniversary.
President Erdogan invited world leaders to Gallipoli, including Armenia's president, who sent an angry rejection, calling it "an attempt to distract attention".,
Hakan Aslan, of the far-right MHP party, insists Turkey's history is something to be proud of
On the shores of the Bosphorus in Istanbul, the far-right MHP party is campaigning for the election, repeating its unrepentant line on Armenia."There was no genocide," says Hakan Aslan, the party's regional head.
"All the ethnic groups who paid their taxes to the Ottoman Empire and weren't traitors lived in peace."None of the graves at Istanbul's Armenian cemetery dates from 1915
Meanwhile at the heart of Istanbul's Armenian cemetery lies the grave of Sevag Balikci. A marble slab bears his name, picture and the date: 24 April 2011.
But among the surrounding graves, not a single one dates from 1915.
In fact, there is no cemetery in Turkey dedicated to those victims, such is the refusal to mark what happened.A sign, say Turkey's critics, of a country still unable to face its past.
