Turkey helped its Turkic Muslim ally Azerbaijan defeat Armenia in a short and bloody war over the mainly Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh last fall. A Russian brokered peace remains in place and now Turkey says it is ready to reopen its sealed borders and establish diplomatic relations with Armenia . Armenia says it too is ready to normalize ties with Turkey. Given the tragic history, the 1915 genocide of more than a million Armenians by Ottoman forces, and the recent spate of bloodshed with Armenia losing large chunks of contested territory along with others it occupied in an earlier war, the newly dovish spirit has caught the uninitiated by surprise.

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