ISTANBUL, June 20, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is set to make a rare visit to arch-foe Turkey on Friday, in what Yerevan has described as a "historic" step toward regional peace.

Armenia and Turkey have never established formal diplomatic ties, and their shared border has been closed since the 1990s.

Relations are strained over the World War I-era mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire -- atrocities Yerevan says amount to genocide. Turkey rejects the label.

Ankara has also backed its close ally, Turkic-speaking Azerbaijan, in its long-running conflict with Armenia.

Pashinyan is visiting Turkey at the invitation of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Armenian parliament speaker Alen Simonyan told reporters.

"This is a historic visit, as it will be the first time a head of the Republic of Armenia visits Turkey at this level. All regional issues will be discussed," he said.

"The risks of war (with Azerbaijan) are currently minimal, and we must work to neutralise them. Pashinyan's visit to Turkey is a step in that direction."

An Armenian foreign ministry official told AFP the two leaders will discuss efforts to sign a comprehensive peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as the regional fallout from the Iran-Israel conflict.

On Thursday -- a day before Pashinyan's visit -- Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev travelled to Turkey for talks with Erdogan and praised Turkish-Azerbaijani alliance as "a significant factor not only regionally but also globally."

Erdogan repeated his backing for "the establishment of peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia".

Baku and Yerevan agreed on the text of a peace deal in March, but Baku has since outlined a host of demands -- including changes to Armenia's constitution -- before it will sign the document.

- Normalisation -

Pashinyan has actively sought to normalise relations with both Baku and Ankara.

Earlier this year, he announced Armenia would halt its campaign for international recognition of the 1915 mass killings of Armenians as genocide -- a major concession to Turkey that sparked widespread criticism at home.

Pashinyan has visited Turkey only once before, for Erdogan's inauguration in 2023. At the time he was one of the first foreign leaders to congratulate the Turkish president on his re-election.

Ankara and Yerevan appointed special envoys in late 2021 to lead a normalisation process, a year after Armenia's defeat in a war with Azerbaijan over then-disputed Karabakh region.

In 2022, Turkey and Armenia resumed commercial flights after a two-year pause.

A previous attempt to normalise relations -- a 2009 accord to open the border -- was never ratified by Armenia and was abandoned in 2018.