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Turkey’s official Anatolia news agency said on Tuesday that Armenia’s Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan was ready to establish diplomatic relations with Turkey and open borders.

Mirzoyan held talks with his Turkish envoy, Mevlut Cavusoglu, at a diplomatic conference in the Turkish city of Antalya on Saturday as part of efforts to reconcile relations after decades of hostility. Cavusoglu described the speeches as “productive and constructive”.

“Armenia is ready to establish diplomatic relations and open borders with Turkey,” the Turkish agency Mirzoyan said in an interview last week. “I am pleased to hear from my Turkish colleague that there is a political will to guide the process towards that goal,” he added.

The first meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries since 2009 took place on Saturday.

The two countries differ in many respects, especially in Armenia, where 1.5 million people were killed in 1915 by the Ottoman Empire, the forerunner of modern Turkey. Armenia says the killings were genocide.

Turkey acknowledges that many Armenians who lived in the empire during World War I were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces, but denies the death toll and denies that the killings were planned or created genocide.

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