Türkiye, Azerbaijan and Georgia sustain trilateral track as corridor politics shift around Armenia

By Murat YILDIZ

Türkiye, Azerbaijan and Georgia have kept their trilateral track active since 2025 through a steady run of defence consultations, joint military activity, and corridor and energy connectivity work linking the South Caucasus to European markets. The channel itself is not new, but the past year made its role easier to see. It is running as a working track with a calendar and follow up, not as a label revived only for summit photos.

Defence: the ministerial track stays on schedule

The clearest signal has been continuity at the ministerial level. The 12th Trilateral Defence Ministers’ Meeting was held in Ankara on Oct. 9, 2025, and Türkiye’s Defence Minister Yaşar Güler also met bilaterally with his Azerbaijani and Georgian counterparts on the margins. (Anadolu Agency:

In the same setting, Türkiye and Georgia signed a military health and training cooperation protocol. It is a modest step, but it adds another layer to a relationship that is already built on training and capacity support and keeps being renewed through routine paperwork rather than occasional political theatre.

Special forces drills: operational coordination on display

That rhythm shows up most clearly when cooperation moves from meeting rooms to training grounds. “Caucasian Eagle 2025”, a joint tactical special forces exercise hosted in Ankara with participation from Azerbaijan, Türkiye and Georgia, was framed in reporting that cites Azerbaijan’s Defence Ministry as part of an annual cooperation plan focused on better coordination, the ability to operate together, and combat readiness.

Exercises like this do not need a single headline scenario to matter. Their value is that they keep the habit of working together alive and familiar, and they make the trilateral track feel operational rather than purely declaratory.

Corridors: BTK capacity steps keep the rail spine relevant

On logistics, the Baku Tbilisi Kars railway remains the clearest shared corridor asset because it is a physical connector the three states can point to and invest in over time. Azerbaijan Railways has described modernization on the Georgian section that lifts annual capacity from one million tons to five million tons. That keeps BTK central to corridor planning even as wider Middle Corridor debates evolve.

The corridor story is no longer only about throughput. Projects like BTK tie budgets and timelines together across borders, which raises the cost of disruption for everyone along the route. BTK remains the spine. The next layer is whether supporting infrastructure turns that spine into a small network with credible alternatives when pressure hits.

Green energy: Black Sea cable steps take shape

Energy connectivity has moved in parallel, with the Black Sea submarine electricity cable project taking more institutional shape. Georgia’s transmission operator said a joint venture registration process was completed in Bucharest on Feb. 3, 2025 with the participation of transmission system operators from Georgia, Azerbaijan, Romania and Hungary, and said the company would handle research and design activities for the green energy corridor, including the high voltage underwater cable.

The project is being marketed as a way to carry Azerbaijan’s renewable output across the Black Sea into European grids. It adds an electricity layer to the region’s connectivity map alongside existing oil and gas corridors. (Georgia State Electrosystem:

Political coordination: the parliamentary track keeps running

The same “keep it moving” approach is visible in parliamentary diplomacy. Georgia’s parliament said the 10th annual trilateral meeting of the foreign affairs committees of the parliaments of Georgia, Türkiye and Azerbaijan was held in Baku on Feb. 25, 2026, presenting it as part of an ongoing schedule rather than a one off engagement.

None of these channels turns the trilateral track into a single institution. What they do is more basic and more durable. They keep the habit of joint work alive across ministries, militaries and parliaments.

Armenia angle: normalization steps and competing connectivity frames

While the Türkiye Azerbaijan Georgia track has kept moving, Armenia remains a live variable in the wider picture through normalization steps and the argument over what kind of connectivity model will shape the region.

Türkiye’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said representatives of relevant institutions from Türkiye and Armenia met on Nov. 28, 2025 at the Akyaka Akhurik border crossing and in Gyumri for a second round of technical discussions aimed at rehabilitating and reactivating the Kars Gyumri railway.

In parallel, the United States has been discussed as a possible manager for a transport corridor between Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave through Armenia’s Syunik province. The proposal keeps returning because it touches the hardest part of the debate: who would monitor the route and what assurances each side would consider acceptable. (Reuters:

Later, Türkiye publicly welcomed the idea of a strategic transit corridor within the U.S.-brokered Armenia Azerbaijan track, presenting it as a regional connectivity gain.

Armenia’s public messaging has also shifted toward concrete energy connectivity. On Jan. 29, 2026, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said it would be appropriate to connect Armenia’s energy system to those of Türkiye and Azerbaijan, arguing it could expand export potential and support regional peace.

Since 2025, the Türkiye Azerbaijan Georgia track has been less about declarations and more about the kind of work that leaves a paper trail and a construction footprint. Defence meetings keep returning to the calendar, special forces cooperation is treated as a repeatable routine, BTK upgrades are framed in capacity numbers, and the Black Sea cable has moved into the phase where a registered vehicle carries the project forward. That accumulation is the story. It keeps the track moving without waiting for a grand regional breakthrough, and it steadily widens the space in which corridor politics are negotiated. Armenia sits close to that space. Ankara and Yerevan can keep testing normalization through technical steps such as the Kars Gyumri railway, but the larger fight is over who sets the rules for transit through Syunik and what guarantees would make any route politically survivable. In that environment, connectivity stops being a slogan. It becomes a choice about the kind of region Armenia wants to enter.