Talks to "normalize" relations between Ankara and Yerevan are ongoing, but some villagers near the shared border are already preparing for long-abandoned crossing points to reopen.
No one knows if the border between Turkey and Armenia will reopen, but Vacho Smbatian is banking on it.
"I'm renovating my house. I'm going to turn it into a hotel," Smbatian told RFE/RL as his flock of sheep grazed near the overgrown Akhuryan train station, 3 kilometers from the Turkish border.
Inside Smbatian's house, workers bustle back and forth and the buzz of power tools occasionally drowns out conversation. The 39-year-old envisions the property becoming a kind of modern-day caravanserai of the Caucasus if the trains that once trundled into Akhuryan station from Turkey return.
Turkish/Armenian border crossings have been shut since 1993, after Azerbaijan’s Kalbacar district was seized by ethnic Armenian forces during the first war between Yerevan and Baku over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
In solidarity with Azerbaijan, Turkey cut off ties with Armenia, further isolating the small Christian state, whose eastern border with Azerbaijan was already locked shut. Turkey insisted its border would reopen only if Kalbacar was returned to Azerbaijani control.
When Azerbaijan launched a massive offensive to wrest land back from Armenia in late 2020, that territory was recaptured by Baku, meaning Turkey's stated reason for the border closure had disappeared.
Talks between Armenia and Turkey to "normalize" relations have been ongoing since January this year. Both sides have expressed willingness to reopen their shared border, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian used language that also leaves room for maintaining the status quo, and two previous similar attempts at reestablishing ties failed, most recently in 2010.
Some Armenians have warned against diplomatic links being restored, referencing the long shadow cast by the massacres beginning in 1915 in which up to 1.5 million Armenians were exterminated by Ottoman Turks, an atrocity that shocked the world, but which Turkey continues to downplay.
Ankara also helped Azerbaijan in the 2020 conflict in which thousands of soldiers were killed -- many on the Armenian side by Turkish-made drones -- and several civilians were sadistically killed. Erdogan also celebrated Yerevan's defeat in an infamous December 2020 victory parade in Baku.
If talks succeed, Armenia stands to gain massively from the opening of trade routes toward the European Union, and directly into the Turkish market. In the eastern Turkish town of Kars, a Eurasianet reporter found overwhelming support among locals for the prospect of cross-border trade with Armenia being restarted when he visited in 2021.
Local experts say items such as Armenian concrete, a material that is cheap to make but expensive to transport long distances, would likely be in high demand in Turkey, as would Armenian-produced electricity. Armenia generates more power than it needs so could potentially direct excess electricity into the Turkish grid.
Countless small businesses would also benefit, and adventurous tourists would flock to the obscure border crossings and spill into towns such as Gyumri, a short drive from the Akhuryan railway station.
Businessman Artush Yeghiazarian, who runs a popular cafe in central Gyumri, says he is cautiously optimistic about the prospect of the nearby border reopening, but sounds a warning.
"Larger economies have much lower cost for production," he told RFE/RL. "This is not the case for Armenia, and our products will not be as competitive."
"Armenia has to protect itself from being overwhelmed, that's what I'm afraid of.... Economically speaking, it can be very dangerous for Armenia's development and it could swallow Armenia in just a couple of years. So the state must take necessary measures taking this into account," Yeghiazarian said.
At the abandoned Akhuryan railway station, where a stork watches warily from atop a pole and the occasional snake darts away underfoot, the idea of overwhelming amounts of trade entering seem hard to believe.
On the balcony of his house near the railway station, Vacho Smbatian sums up the sentiment shared by other villagers RFE/RL spoke to: "We can only get moving again if trade with Turkey gets going," he says. "Otherwise, here there is nothing."
