Erdoğan blocks Macron's Armenia-to-Türkiye crossing after talks with Baku

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan did not allow French President Emmanuel Macron to cross his country's land border from Armenia following consultations with Baku, Report informs via the Azerbaijani Telegram channel AZfront.

Macron, who was visiting Yerevan from May 3-5 to participate in a series of events, had planned to make a "politically symbolic" gesture by traveling from there to Türkiye through the closed land border for a meeting with Erdoğan.

As several informed sources told the outlet, the visit had been agreed upon in advance with certain representatives of the Turkish side. However, when the matter was elevated to the level of the Turkish head of state, after discussions with his strategic ally, Azerbaijan, he refused to meet with Macron.

"Presumably, Macron, amid international criticism of his failed foreign policy, was hoping to turn the trip from Armenia to Turkey into a demonstration of his own diplomatic weight. The French president's crossing of the Turkish-Armenian border, which has been closed for over 30 years, could have become an unprecedented example of bilateral communications being opened by a third party.

Having lost Africa and the Middle East, having damaged relations with Israel, and having achieved nothing on the Ukrainian front, Macron with his failed attempt once again underscored the gap between his own geopolitical ambitions and Paris's actual weight on the international stage," the outlet writes, also citing as an example an article from the newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche titled "French diplomacy is rapidly losing its significance under Macron."

Interestingly, against this backdrop, the statements of Türkiye's special representative for normalization of relations with Armenia, Serdar Kılıç, gained resonance. He stated that he "feels at home in Yerevan" and that, when making proposals to his Armenian counterpart Ruben Rubinyan after the start of Armenian-Turkish normalization, he "was guided by the interests of Armenians, not Türkiye."

Azerbaijani media note that his rhetoric contradicts the official line of the Turkish authorities and may be perceived as a departure from national interests.