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Some Armenian economists look warily to their north, where Turkish products dominate the Georgian market. In 2019, Turkey exported approximately $1.5bn in goods to Georgia, but imported only $300mn, according to official Turkish statistics.
Armenian business owners fear a
repeat of that scenario, said Alexandr Grigoryan, an economist at the American University of Armenia and part of a group of scholars that has been carrying out research into Armenian businesspeople’s expectations vis-a-vis trade with Turkey.
Armenian business fears “the threat
of economic expansion from Turkey if the Turkish state begins to purposefully apply such an economic policy,” Grigoryan told Eurasianet. “In the case of such developments, the Armenian businessmen we interviewed expect the support of the Armenian state.”
Given the comparatively small size of Armenia’s economy, its importance to Turkey is likely to be local rather than national, said Guven Sak, the managing director of the Turkish think tank
TEPAV. Armenia "is not a place that can be a source of growth for the Turkish economy on a national scale" but it could be "extremely beneficial" as a regional development project for border cities, Sak told Turkey’s Anadolu Agency.
The Armenian government has not yet announced any plans to protect the country’s businesses in the event the Turkish border opens, and an Economy Ministry spokesperson told Eurasianet that it had not carried out any projections of possible impacts.
Following the 2020 war, Armenia imposed a ban on Turkish imports of consumer goods in protest at Turkey’s heavy backing of Azerbaijan.
The import ban was lifted at the beginning of 2021, as Yerevan and Ankara began to take steps toward normalising relations, appointing envoys and carrying out their first bilateral meetings in more than
a decade.
Direct flights between the two countries began on February 2, carried out by both FlyOne Armenia and Turkey’s Pegasus Air. There had been no direct flights since 2020 when AtlasGlobal, the last airline to fly the route, went bankrupt.
The envoys met in Moscow in January and are scheduled to meet a second time in Vienna on February 26. Diplomatic progress is sure to be slow and there is no timetable for when, or even if, the border will open.
Armenian officials have generally tried to accentuate the potential gains from freer cross-border trade.
“Maybe in a particular segment of the economy some goods will lose their competitiveness, but it will make you think about what new opportunities appear after the opening of the border,” Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said during an online press conference on January 24.
A member of parliament from the ruling Civil Contract Party and close Pashinyan associate Khachatur Sukiasyan told reporters that Armenia could gain medical tourism from eastern Turkey.
“I have already called on the medical centres of Yerevan and the city of Gyumri to improve their technologies and medical services, which, when the border is opened, will be used by Turkish citizens living at a distance of up to 200 kilometres from the Armenian border, because these services are not developed there,” Sukiasyan told reporters on January 17.
Sukiasyan’s family is in fact already benefiting: His brother is a co-founder and board member of FlyOne Armenia, one of the carriers that started flying the Yerevan-Istanbul route.
Arshaluis Mgdesyan is a journalist based in Yerevan.
This article originally appeared on Eurasianet.
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