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Professor Ruben Melkonyan, dean of the YSU Faculty of Oriental Studies, has called the latest phone call between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a despite attempt to invigorate bilateral ties.

The Armenian government said in a readout on Tuesday that the two leaders reaffirmed their commitment “to fully normalize relations between Armenia and Turkey without preconditions.” Erdogan’s office issued no a statement on the phone call.

Melkonyan claims progress has been achieved in the normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations, including at the meetings of the two countries’ special envoys.

“I believe this is yet another desperate effort of Armenia’s failed diplomacy aimed at ostensibly activating Armenian-Turkish relations,” he told Panorama.am in an interview on Wednesday, highlighting that the agreements on opening the Armenian-Turkish border for citizens of third countries and launching air freight traffic between the two countries had not been implemented to date.

“I think that the authorities and diplomats serving them at least admit to themselves that no progress has been made in this regard," Melkonyan said, stating the normalization process was initially doomed to failure.

The expert brushed aside the statement on the unconditional normalization of bilateral relations, stating Pashinyan had already started to fulfill some of the preconditions put forward by Turkey regarding the use of Mount Ararat in Armenia’s national symbols, as well as the pursuit for the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

“In the current situation, it is simply not serious to talk about the normalization of relations without preconditions when you have already started to fulfill Turkish preconditions. Therefore, this statement aligns with the failed and deadlocked Armenian-Turkish relations," Melkonyan remarked.