Armenia–Turkey relations
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Armenia–Turkey relations officially do not exist. Turkey recognized the modern Republic of Armenia shortly after the latter gained independence in 1991, but the two countries failed to establish formal diplomatic relations. In 1993 Turkey reacted to the war in Nagarno-Karabakh by closing its border with Armenia out of support for Azerbaijan.
In 2009, following Turkish president Abdullah Gül's visit to Armenia in 2008, a provisional roadmap for normalizing diplomatic ties was announced. However, in the following year, due to intense internal pressure on both sides, and disagreements between the two countries, the diplomatic thaw came to a close.
In the 10th century, certain Turkic tribes, traditionally agrarian nomads of the Pontic Steppe and Central Asia, began moving westward towards the Middle East and Anatolia, encroaching upon indigenous local populations that included Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks. In 1071, at the Battle of Manzikert, a city in Byzantine-controlled Armenia, the Seljuk Turks routed the Byzantine armies and captured the Byzantine emperor. In the resulting chaos, the Turks easily overran much of the Byzantine empire and, despite Byzantine reconquests and occasional western incursions in the form of crusading armies, a series of Turkish states were established in Anatolia. These Turkic tribes came around the south end of the Caspian Sea for the most part, and hence absorbed and transmitted Islamic culture and civilization in contrast to other Turks who, such as the Cumans, became partially Westernized and Christianized. With some superiority in population and organization, regional power naturally came to rest in the hands of the Turkic speaking population. Many Turkic people came into the region fleeing from the Mongol invasions, and others later came in as soldiers fighting in the ranks of Mongol armies. Turkic Islamized populations also absorbed large numbers of the older inhabitants of Asia Minor, including Greeks, Phyrigians, and Armenians, who went over to the Islamic religion and Turkic language, creating a frontier society. Armenian communities continued to flourish under relatively tolerant Ottoman rule for centuries, either as minority populations in urban areas or as exclusively Armenian towns in rural areas. In cities such as Istanbul and İzmir, Armenians played particularly important roles; an 1851 New York Times report, for instance, indicates that Armenians comprised nearly one quarter of the population of Istanbul at that time, with over 200,000 residents.
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