Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Tuesday renewed calls for Armenia to seek peace with Azerbaijan, stressing that progress in their ties would determine the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations.
Erdogan hailed Saturday's signing of two accords between Turkey and Armenia, long estranged by bloody history, as "an extremely positive stage" in fence-mending talks since August 2007 aimed at establishing formal ties and opening the border between the two neighbors.
He stressed however that the Nagorny Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan, one of Turkey's closest allies, and Armenia would be a determining factor when the accords are submitted to the Turkish parliament for ratification.
"The parliament will look at the developments in the problems between Azerbaijan and Armenia," Erdogan told a meeting of his party's lawmakers.
"If the problems... are put on the track of solution, the Turkish people will embrace more the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations and the Turkish parliament's ratification of the protocols will become much easier," he said.
Armenia says ties with Turkey should be established without pre-conditions and categorically rejects any link to its conflict with Azerbaijan.
But Erdogan's government is under fire at home for reconciling with Yerevan without progress in the Nagorny Karabakh conflict, accused by the opposition of selling out Azerbaijan, which has close ethnic, political and economic bonds with Turkey.
"We aim at a just, comprehensive and lasting settlement... I believe the obstacles in the way of peace can be lifted," Erdogan said.
Turkey has refused to establish diplomatic ties with Armenia over Yerevan's international campaign to have the World War I massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks recognized as genocide, a label Ankara fiercely rejects.
In 1993, Turkey also closed its border with Armenia in a show of solidarity with Azerbaijan over Yerevan's support for ethnic Armenian separatists in Azerbaijan's breakaway Nagorny Karabakh region.
The move dealt a serious economic blow to the impoverished former Soviet nation.