Armenia–Turkey Border Stays Shut to Travellers Until Yerevan–Baku Sign Peace Deal

Turkey will open its border with Armenia only after Armenia and Azerbaijan sign a full peace treaty, Turkey's Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, Abdulkadir Uraloğlu, said on Tuesday. The border has been closed for more than three decades, and travellers can currently not cross it directly between the two countries.

Uraloğlu spoke to a reporter from RFE/RL during the COP31 UN climate summit in Antalya, Turkey. No date for an opening has been announced.

Key facts

• Condition for opening: a signed full peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan
• Who said it: Turkey's Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu, on 10 November 2026
• Prepared so far: work on the Kars–Gyumri railway and the land border at Alican
• Border crossings involved: Alican on the Turkish side, Margara on the Armenian side
• Current status: the border has remained closed for over three decades

What did the Turkish minister say?

Uraloğlu said Turkey expects Armenia and Azerbaijan to reach a full agreement and that he has discussed this with his Armenian counterpart. He said the necessary preparatory work has been carried out for both the railway tracks, referring to the Kars–Gyumri line, and the land border at Alican.

He added that, given mutual agreement and taking into account Azerbaijan's sensitivities, opening the border once a deal is reached would not take long, expressing hope it would happen quickly. The statement was the latest in a series of Turkish conditions attached to opening the crossing.

What has been done so far?

Following the 44-day Artsakh war, Yerevan and Ankara began a new phase of normalising relations without preconditions and agreed to open the border to citizens of third countries. Turkey has nevertheless kept the border shut, consistently tying any opening to the normalisation of Armenian–Azerbaijani relations. Yerevan and Baku initialed a peace treaty last year but have not yet signed it.

On the Armenian side, the Margara checkpoint, opposite the Turkish checkpoint of Alican, was renovated two years ago. In the summer, Armenia's Ministry of Territorial Administration announced a tender for design work related to construction of the Gyumri–Kars railway; the tender results have not been announced.

Officials from Armenia and Turkey met in Yerevan in October to discuss restoring the Gyumri–Kars power transmission line. In July, the mayor of Akyaka, a town in Kars Province bordering Armenia's Shirak region, said work was under way to restore Akyaka–Gyumri railway infrastructure and was expected to be completed in two to three months. He also said a tender had been announced for a land route from Akyaka to Gyumri.

What this means for travellers

There is no direct overland crossing between Armenia and Turkey at present, and the timeline for one depends on a peace treaty that has not been signed. Travellers should not plan itineraries that assume the border will open on any particular date.

What happens next

The opening now rests on the signature of the Armenia–Azerbaijan peace treaty, for which no date has been announced. The results of Armenia's Gyumri–Kars railway design tender are still pending.