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Clashes broke out a week ago in Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region of Azerbaijan with an Armenian majority, raising alarms about the risks of a broader war that could draw Russia, Turkey and Iran.
The conflict had raged for decades in a remote mountainous region of the Caucasus without much strategic importance to anyone. Why is this escalation in fighting over the past week different from the sporadic violence of the past?
A great distinction: a more direct engagement in the conflict by Turkey in support of its ethnic Turkish ally, Azerbaijan, in a region of traditional Russian influence.
The fighting comes as Turkey increasingly shows its muscles in the Middle East and North Africa, adding to the dangers of a regional escalation in what had been a largely local, albeit poisonous, ethnic conflict. And, distracted by the coronavirus pandemic, international mediators ignored warning signs as tensions rose in Nagorno-Karabakh over the summer, analysts say.
Here’s a guide on the conflict and why it has flared up again.
The region is an ethnic tinderbox
A war that started in the late Soviet period between Armenians and Azerbaijanis set the stage for today’s fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh. The ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan declared its independence and was nearly crushed in the war that followed before its fighters captured large areas of Azerbaijan in a series of victories that led to a ceasefire in 1994.
The region became one of half a dozen so-called frozen conflict zones in the vast area of the former Soviet Union. However, its deep-seated ethnic animosity sets it apart, as does the fact that it was the only separatist state not occupied by the Russian military.
The settlement reached 26 years ago, always intended to be temporary, left some 600,000 Azerbaijanis who had fled the area abandoned from their homes and Nagorno-Karabakh vulnerable to attack by Azerbaijan, which promised to take back the area.
The world oil market, as is often the case, became a backdrop for the conflict, as did the growing economic and military strength of Azerbaijan, an oil exporter.
The Nagorno-Karabakh region was always ready to renew local conflict, but in the past Russia and Turkey had sometimes cooperated to defuse tensions. The last fighting began on September 27. Azerbaijan said Armenia bombed its positions first, while Armenia says an Azerbaijani offensive was unprovoked. So far, at least 150 people have died.
A local struggle threatens to attract regional powers
The uneasy cooperation between Turkey and Russia is beginning to fade as both countries become increasingly assertive in the Middle East and the United States has stepped back.
Relations between the three countries have become more complicated. Turkey has managed to alienate the United States by buying anti-aircraft missiles from Russia and cutting off a gas pipeline deal that is seen to undermine Ukraine. At the same time, it is fighting proxy wars against Moscow in Syria and Libya.
After Russian airstrikes in Syria killed Turkish soldiers earlier this year, Turkey soon appeared on other battlefields where Russia was vulnerable.
In May, Turkey deployed Syrian military advisers, armed drones and fighters to Libya to prop up the UN-backed government and push back a rival Russian-backed faction in that war. In July and August, she sent troops and equipment to Azerbaijan for military exercises.
Armenia has said that Turkey is directly involved in the fighting and that a Turkish F-16 fighter shot down an Armenian plane. Turkey denies those accusations.
Russia and France, however, have supported Armenia’s claim that Turkey deployed Syrian militants in Nagorno-Karabakh, following its playbook in Libya.
A vice chairman of the international affairs committee of the Russian parliament last week raised the prospect of a Russian military intervention as a peacekeeping effort for the first time, although higher Kremlin officials and the Foreign Ministry are calling for a negotiated truce. .
Iran, meanwhile, shares a direct border with the separatist region in an area of rolling, grassy hills along the Aras River, the scene of some of the most intense recent fighting. The Nagorno-Karabakh army said on Thursday that it had fired on an Azerbaijani helicopter, which then crashed in Iran.
The warning signs were ignored
Distracted by other issues such as the pandemic and a popular uprising in Belarus, another former Soviet state, international mediators overlooked warning signs and potential opportunities for diplomacy, analysts say.
Travel restrictions related to the coronavirus impeded traditional ferry diplomacy during the summer, said Olesya Vartanyan, senior Caucasian analyst at International Crisis Group. For the fighters in Nagorno-Karabakh, “this is a perfect time” to start a war, he said.
When Armenia, a Russian ally, killed a general and other Azerbaijani army officers in a missile strike during a border skirmish in July, Turkey immediately offered to help prepare a response, said a retired Turkish general, Ismail. Hakki Pekin.
Joint Turkish and Azerbaijani military exercises followed. The shrinking role of the United States was a backdrop when Turkey stepped up its assertive policies, although the United States never wielded as much influence in the South Caucasus region as Russia.
What Watch for now
The last major US effort to negotiate peace in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was 20 years ago when the United States invited the parties to dialogue in Florida, but the issue dropped from the US agenda after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 2001.
The mediators then promoted an exchange of territory, including some that Azerbaijan lost in the war of the 1990s, but neither side agreed to exchange land.
The most optimistic outcome of the current fight, analysts say, would be a return to the same unhappy state of affairs from a week ago rather than a broader war, which could draw Turkey and Russia in.
