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Friday 23 October 2020
The trip of several AfD deputies to Nagorno-Karabakh causes problems in the crisis region. In doing so, they wanted to draw attention to the conflict, the politicians now justify themselves. Because Azerbaijan is fighting for a “neo-Ottoman empire”.
AfD members of the Bundestag justified their trip to Nagorno-Karabakh, which was strongly criticized by Azerbaijan, in order to clarify the background to the bloody conflict. He sees there not just a local military conflict, but an “attempt to fight for a neo-Ottoman Empire,” Stefan Keuter said in Berlin. He wanted to “guide the audience’s gaze.”
His group colleague, Steffen Kotré, criticized Azerbaijan for not allowing the entry of AfD deputies. Earlier in the week, the state criticized the visit of several AfD deputies to the Armenian-controlled conflict region in the South Caucasus in a protest note. Bundestag members Steffen Kotré and Stefan Keuter, as well as members of the state parliament Andreas Galau and Andreas Kalbitz had illegally visited the “Armenian-occupied” war zone, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry announced. The protest note was sent to the German Bundestag and the Brandenburg State Parliament.
The men were members of a group that was agitating for Armenia, the protest note said. Therefore, they would be included in a “black list” that would ban entry to Azerbaijan in the future. Kalbitz, who had been denied membership in the party in May by the AfD federal executive board due to previous contacts with the right-wing extremist media, wrote on Facebook: “My solidarity goes to the Armenian people and their brave defenders, who also represent the struggle of Christian cultural areas against Islamic expansion. “
The two former Soviet republics have been fighting for the region with around 145,000 residents for decades. Armenia controls Nagorno-Karabakh, but under international law it belongs to Islamic Azerbaijan. In a war that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union some 30 years ago, Azerbaijan lost control of the area. There has been a fragile ceasefire since 1994. Russia is considered to be Armenia’s protective power.
