The meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in the USA has caused a significant uproar within the Armenian public and was met with mixed reactions.

Axar.az reports that following the leaders' meeting, media outlets and social media accounts linked to Pashinyan began sharing videos of the then Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan's visit to Istanbul in 1997 and his meeting with former Turkish President Suleyman Demirel.

This highlighted that the Armenian leadership had previously engaged with Turkiye for economic interests.

The video from 27 years ago has attracted interest on social media, particularly noting Ter-Petrosyan's relaxed demeanor and his normal relationship with the Turkish president during the meeting.

The meeting took place during the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Conference (BSEC) held in Istanbul in 1997, where Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev also participated. During the visit, Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents met with Turkiye's mediation to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The peace initiatives of the then Turkish president and Heydar Aliyev were praised by many world politicians.

In those years, an article published by Petrosyan regarding a peaceful resolution to the Karabakh issue caused significant controversy. It has been claimed that during the meeting, a unified plan for resolving the issue was agreed upon by Baku and Yerevan, but Russia attempted to obstruct it.

Petrosyan was removed from power in 1998, a year after his visit to Istanbul, through the initiative of "Armenian nationalists" led by the Khojaly murderer Robert Kocharian, who had Moscow's support.

We present the footage from Istanbul taken 27 years ago: