Special Representative of Turkey, Ambassador Serdar Kılıç spoke on December 27 at the forum "Life devoted to diplomacy: Turkey-Armenia relations in the light of recent developments", organized by the Department of Linguistics and History and Geography of Ankara University, Ermenihaber.am reported.

Kılıç made important remarks about the beginning, the current stage of the Armenia-Turkey process and other significant issues in terms of revealing the approaches of the Turkish side. First of all, he touched upon the process unfolding between Armenia and Azerbaijan. According to his conviction, in case of mutual understanding and consideration of the long-term interests of both sides, the existing problems will be overcome: "We must recognize that a positive development in one process positively affects the other process, and in the same way a negative development in one of the processes affects the other. The two processes run separately, but it is impossible to separate them completely.

Talking about the Turkish-Armenian process, the Turkish Special Representative said that there are rumors that Turkey and Armenia are in fact holding trilateral talks because Azerbaijan is part of this process, "Of course, Azerbaijan is present and there are countries that are in dialogue with Armenia. But they are not physically present in the process, so they cannot dictate conditions in the process. The process is purely on a bilateral level. It takes place exclusively between me and Ruben Rubinyan, the Armenian Special Representative. He and I have good friendly relations."

Kılıç reiterated the positive atmosphere of recent meetings between Armenia and Turkey at various levels, but pointed out that there are certain problems. In his opinion, the regional countries should seek to solve the existing problems, but recently the OSCE, the European Union has started to interfere and internationalize the problem, which the Turkish Ambassador finds wrong, "The regional countries should solve their problems on their own initiative and defend them. This is what Rubinyan and I are trying to do at the moment."

Serdar Kılıç stressed that substantive steps are being taken as part of the settlement process. One of them is that in a very short period of time bilateral air transportation between Armenia and Turkey will commence. Kılıç believes that the process of establishing lasting peace and stability in the region passes through the Turkey-Armenia settlement process. The success of the Turkey-Armenia process also determines the establishment of stable foundations for relations between Armenia and the West, he believes.

"If Armenia expects a better standard of living and prosperity for its people, the way to do that is through a Turkey-Armenia settlement. Now imagine that we have two border crossings, one by rail and one by road. If they are opened, opposite the Alijan border crossing is Yerevan. Opposite the Akyaka border point is Gyumri. With the economic sanctions against Russia, given the existing problems in trade with Armenia, this could have a huge impact on the living standards of the Armenian people," Kılıç said.