Turkey on Dec. 15 named a former ambassador as special envoy to work on the normalization of ties with arch-foe Armenia.
Armenia and Turkey have never established formal diplomatic ties and their shared border has been closed since the 1990s.
The two countries’ relations are particularly tense over 1915 events.
There were further strains after Turkey supported Armenia’s Caucasus neighbor Azerbaijan, which last year fought a war with Armenia for control of the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region.
“With the authorization of the president, our former Washington ambassador Serdar Kılıç will be officially appointed as special envoy,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said in televised comments.
Kılıç was also previously Ankara’s envoy in Japan and Lebanon.
Turkish and Armenian companies had applied for permission for charter flights between Istanbul and Yerevan, he added.
The transport ministry will evaluate the applications and there would be more information in the coming days about which airlines could fly, Çavuşoğlu said.
Hurriyet Daily News