Turkish, Azerbaijani presidents meet in Azerbaijan's Nakhchivan exclave for talks

By Diyar Guldogan

ANKARA (AA) – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday arrived in Azerbaijan's autonomous Nakhchivan exclave upon the invitation of his counterpart Ilham Aliyev.

Aliyev welcomed Erdogan with an official ceremony before holding one-on-one talks to discuss bilateral relations, as well as regional and global issues, particularly the recent developments in Karabakh. They will later hold a joint news conference.

The leaders will also attend the groundbreaking ceremony of the Igdir-Nakhchivan natural gas pipeline and inaugurate the modernized Nakhchivan military complex.

Ankara and Baku agreed in 2020, in a memorandum of understanding, to supply natural gas from Türkiye to Azerbaijan's Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.

The new 85-kilometer (53-mile) gas pipeline will run from Türkiye's eastern province of Igdir to Sederek in western Azerbaijan, with an annual capacity of 500 million cubic meters (mcm) and a daily capacity of 1.5 mcm.

The project will be realized through a partnership between Türkiye's crude oil and natural gas pipeline trading company BOTAS and Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR.