Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry has reacted angrily to Saturday’s historic peace deal between Armenia and Turkey, in which the two countries agreed to establish diplomatic ties and reopen their common borders. The Azerbaijan Foreign Ministry said: "The normalisation of relations between Turkey and Armenia before the withdrawal of Armenian troops from occupied Azeri territory is in direct contradiction to the national interests of Azerbaijan."

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in support of Azerbaijan, which was fighting a war against Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabach. The Azeris speak a language similar to Turkish and are for the most part Shiite Muslims.

Armenia and Turkey have had poor ties ever since Turkey’s deportation of millions of Armenians in 1915 and 1916. Turkey, which had sided with Germany and the Central Powers in World War I, suffered a defeat in a campaign against Russian forces in 1914. Turkish War Minister Enver Pasha blamed this defeat on the Armenians living in the region. On the pretext that Armenians were siding with the enemy, Turkey began deporting Armenians.

While the Turkish authorities maintain that 300,000 Armenians died during the deportations, Western scholars put the figure at between 500,000 and 600,000. The Armenians claim that 1.5 million people were systematically killed.

Although the agreement, signed at a ceremony in Switzerland, has been welcomed by many in Europe and elsewhere in the world, thousands of people protested against it in the Armenian capital Yerevan, saying it does not fully address the massacres. The deal calls for a commission of independent historians to investigate what has come to be known as the ‘Armenian genocide’.

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