The Nabucco pipeline project, mutual visa exemptions, facilities for businessmen and the Nagorno-Karabakh talks are expected to top Turkey’s agenda as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan prepares to visit Azerbaijan on Wednesday.

Erdoğan, who is making his second visit abroad since forming a new government after the June 12 elections, will discuss bilateral relations and regional issues with Azerbaijani President İlham Aliyev, a senior Turkish diplomat told the Hürriyet Daily News on Tuesday.

The Nabucco pipeline, a multi-billion-dollar project to export natural gas from the Caspian Sea to Turkey, is among those issues, the diplomat said.

Azerbaijan and Turkey are at odds over the project, leaving Azerbaijan the only project partner absent when the legal framework for Nabucco was signed June 8 in Turkey’s Kayseri province between Nabucco Gas Pipeline International GmbH and the responsible ministries of the five transit countries, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Turkey.

An obligatory bilateral transit agreement between Azerbaijan and Turkey was almost signed in May 2010, “but some minor and some important things prevented the two parties from agreeing and finalizing it,” Elshad Nasirov, the vice president of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, or SOCAR, told the Daily News in a recent interview. Talks between two countries over the transit of Shah Deniz II gas supplies were also suspended in May because of Turkey’s parliamentary elections in June.

The issue of facilities for the two countries’ businessmen will also be discussed in the meetings, as will the long-standing bilateral visa exemption issue, which has been at a standstill due to Azerbaijan’s insistence that if Baku lifts visa requirements for Turkish citizens it would have to do the same for those from Iran. “Talks are ongoing on visa exemption, yet have not resulted in an agreement,” the Turkish diplomat said.

Along with bilateral issues, giving momentum to the Karabakh talks will be on Erdoğan and Aliyev’s agenda for discussion. Azerbaijan and Armenia’s failure in June to come to an agreement over the contested territory has led to disappointment in the international arena.

A flashpoint of the Caucasus, the region known as Nagorno-Karabakh is a constituent part of Azerbaijan that has been occupied by Armenia since the end of 1994. While internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory, the enclave has declared itself an independent republic but is administered as a de facto part of Armenia.

Another controversial subject is the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process that has been blocked by Baku, which indirectly threatened Turkey that it would stop supplying natural gas and give Russia preference as its main energy partner.

A set of confidence-building measures are planned between Turkey and Armenia as part of efforts to keep the momentum of the reconciliation process alive. One of these is the idea of starting direct flights from Yerevan to Turkey’s Van, a destination for many Armenians who wish to visit an ancient Armenian church on Akdamar Island in Lake Van. The proposal, though, drew a negative reaction from Azerbaijan.

“We do not interfere with the affairs of two [other] countries but we still reserve the right to respond in case of the infringement of the national interests of Azerbaijan,” Elman Abdullayev, the first secretary of Azerbaijan’s MFA press service, told the Trend news agency in response to the Yerevan-Van flight plan.

/Hurriyet Daily News/