ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the substance of relations between Turkey and Armenia and Turks and Armenians since independence. Soviet Armenia did not have a policy towards Turkey since foreign and security policies were within the jurisdiction of Moscow, and Moscow had normal relations with the Republic of Turkey. In successive treaties the USSR reaffirmed the borders between the two countries and Genocide recognition did not figure on the Soviet agenda. The war in Karabakh and Turkey's decision to link the negotiations on the establishing of normal relations with Armenia to the conflict brought to an end this first, most promising phase of diplomacy between the two countries. The second phase in the relations between the two countries stretched from April 1993 to February 1998 or the end of the Levon Ter-Petrossian presidency. The third phase in Turkish-Armenian state-to-state relations began when Robert Kocharian, prime minister of Armenia and former president of Karabakh, assumed the presidency of Armenia in April 1998.
