For much of the past three decades, the South Caucasus has been defined by closed borders, frozen conflicts and missed opportunities. Today, that static picture is beginning to shift. The emerging interplay between Ankara, Yerevan and Baku suggests that the region, long treated as a geopolitical periphery, is cautiously repositioning itself as a corridor of strategic relevance, for its immediate neighbours and for Europe as a whole.

The forthcoming gathering of the European Political Community in Yerevan captures this transition in real time. Armenia’s role as host is significant, but it is the expected presence of Turkiye's Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz that marks a turning point. A visit at this level from Turkiye is unprecedented in the post-Soviet period, and it signals that Ankara is prepared to test a new approach towards a neighbour with whom it has had no formal diplomatic relations for decades.

Some might call it a gesture made in isolation. But to my thinking, it is part of a broader recalibration shaped by the aftermath of the 2020 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which altered both territorial realities and political calculations. The conflict did not resolve all disputes, but it did break the inertia that had defined the region. In its wake, a fragile but tangible process of engagement that links Ankara–Yerevan normalisation with the parallel, and more consequential, trajectory of........

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