Alexander Pracht
Turkish Airlines, Turkey’s flag carrier, operated its first-ever flight from Istanbul to Yerevan on Wednesday. The flights between Armenia’s capital and Turkey’s largest city, first announced last September, will run daily and are set to expand to twice daily starting in June.
While air travel between Armenia and Turkey has existed since the early 2000s, those services were mainly operated by smaller low-cost carriers. One such airline is Pegasus; it has served daily flights between Yerevan and Istanbul in recent years.
Turkish Airlines is Turkey’s largest airline. About 49% of its shares are owned by the Turkish government, while the remainder are publicly traded.
The arrival of Turkey's national airline on the route is seen as carrying political symbolism amid ongoing efforts to normalize relations between the two countries.
Armenia and Turkey have never established diplomatic relations, though they formally recognize each other. In recent years, contacts have intensified, including two visits by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to Turkey and several trips by Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan.
A joint working group launched in 2021 has been tasked with pursuing normalization. As part of the process, Turkey’s special envoy visited Armenia in September for talks.
Negotiations have focused on establishing diplomatic relations and reopening the land border between the countries, which Ankara unilaterally closed in 1993 in support of Azerbaijan’s blockade of Armenia during the Nagorno-Karabakh War. So far, discussions have centered on allowing third-country nationals to cross the frontier.
Despite more than four years of dialogue, progress is widely viewed as tied to Armenia’s relations with Azerbaijan, with Turkey reluctant to advance normalization until Yerevan and Baku take further confidence-building steps.
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