Ruben Rubinyan to step down as Armenia’s Turkey envoy

Armenia’s parliamentary vice speaker Ruben Rubinyan will step down as the country’s special envoy in negotiations with Turkey after taking the position of parliamentary speaker, he said on Friday at a press briefing.

“Since I have been nominated for the position of Speaker of the National Assembly, it is obvious that if I am elected, I will no longer serve as Armenia's special representative in the negotiations with Turkey,” Rubinyan said. He did not suggest who might become Armenia’s new negotiator with Ankara after his expected appointment as speaker.

The ruling Civil Contract party held an internal vote last week, where Rubinyan prevailed over the current speaker Alen Simonyan, who announced following the vote that he had hoped to retain the position, but will now leave parliament altogether. He also congratulated Rubinyan on the nomination and said the parliament could not have hoped for a better alternative.

Also read: Armenia’s chief negotiator with Turkey set to become parliamentary speaker

Civil Contract won 64 out of 105 seats in the new parliament in a nationwide election held last month, which will allow it to appoint the prime minister and parliamentary speaker through a simple majority.

Armenia and Turkey have no diplomatic relations, but multiple efforts to normalize ties have been attempted over the years. The latest process, launched in 2021, saw Yerevan and Ankara appoint special envoys for normalization in the absence of ambassadors – effectively chief negotiators on the matter. While Armenia picked young lawmaker and former deputy foreign minister Rubinyan for the role, Turkey appointed Serdar Kılıç, a veteran diplomat and the country’s former ambassador to the United States.

Though normalization plans announced in 2022 included establishing diplomatic relations and reopening the shared border shuttered since 1993 on Turkey’s orders, neither has materialized after more than four years. The Turkish foreign ministry says it expects Armenia to first sign a normalization deal with Azerbaijan, ending decades of war between the two countries.

Also read: European Parliament calls for Ankara’s stronger role in Yerevan–Baku normalization

Though Yerevan and Baku initialed the deal last August under U.S. mediation, the Azerbaijani leadership demands that for a full signing Armenia must abolish a constitutional provision that refers to the country’s declaration of independence, which in turn mentions Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku views it as Yerevan’s continued territorial claim on the region that was ethnically cleansed of Armenians in 2023.