Turkey and Armenia are finally on the path towards normalizing their bilateral relations. Although this event directly affects a small corner of the earth, I think this is a huge deal. When I was living in Yerevan I cannot overstate the extent to which Armenia's sealed border with Turkey warped daily life in that impoverished country and in the region as a whole. Even for a comparatively wealthy American, travel from Armenia to Turkey was prohibitively expensive and full of hassles, involving either a flight (once a week I think) to far away Istambul or a very bumpy car ride hours north to Georgia and then over the border into Turkey. And this despite the fact that Turkey was literally close enough to look at. This move will hopefully bring some much needed dynamism to both Armenia and the South Caucasus as a whole.
The picture above is of Mount Ararat. I took it from the balcony of my apartment and saw it almost every day just like the other residents of Yerevan, Armenia's capital and largest city. Ararat is a sacred mountain for Armenians and plays a central role in their national identity (its even on their national coat of arms- its the mountain right in the middle). However, since Ararat is just across the border it has been very difficult to visit and served as a constant reminder of the painfully strained relations with neighboring Turkey, over the Armenian-Azeri war earlier in the 1990s and the historical questions surrounding the Armenian genocide (or whatever you want to call it, not trying to be provocative). That mountain always felt to me like a looming reminder of the the artificial cleavages left in the wake the wars of the 1990s, and honestly even as a visitor I found it galling that I couldn't really visit. Hopefully that will soon change.
Update: If you're interested in a concise rundown of the issues involved with the detente, check out this article at Foreign Policy.
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