Turkey's Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure says flights to and from Armenia will resume next month as the two neighbors continue discussions aimed at normalizing bilateral ties after years of animosity.
The ministry on January 19 said Turkish budget carrier Pegasus Airlines will operate three flights per week between Istanbul and Yerevan, while Fly One Armenia will schedule three flights between Yerevan and Istanbul.
"According to the agreement reached, the first flights will start mutually on 2 February," the ministry said in a statement.
The announcement comes after the first round of talks in Moscow last week on renewing ties. Further discussions are planned, both sides said after the initial meeting.
Relations between Armenia and Turkey have historically been complicated over the 1915 killings of Armenians at the hands of the Ottomans.
But it was the war between Armenian separatists and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh during the Soviet Union's chaotic breakup in 1991 that soured any potential for normal relations between Ankara and Yerevan.
Armenia's victory prompted Turkey to seal the border in 1993 in support of its Turkic allies in Baku.
Regional dynamics changed when Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a six-week war in 2020 over Nagorno-Karabakh that had been under ethnic Armenian control for nearly three decades.
NATO member Turkey threw its weight behind Azerbaijan in the war, which ended with a Russia-brokered cease-fire in November 2020 that allowed its Turkic ally to regain control over parts of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding territory, with Russian peacekeepers on the ground.
