Erdogan fuels war in Putin’s front yard

The fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan is getting more and more intense, with more and more deaths. Turkey supports the war, to the chagrin of Russia. What do Putin and Erdogan want in the region?

Tanks burn, rocket launchers and fighter jets fire massive projectiles at the military enemy, dead soldiers lie motionless in the trenches of the border region. These images of the growing conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh are relentlessly broadcast by Armenia and Azerbaijan through television and the Internet. On the one hand it is the war propaganda of hostile countries, but on the other hand and above all the videos document one thing: the horror of war.

The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, which culminated in a bloody war in the early 1990s, now erupts with more violence than it has for a long time. Since Sunday there have been more than 60 dead and hundreds injured. In both states a state of war was declared. There seems to be no solution in sight and trust between the warring parties has been completely destroyed. But if war breaks out again, conflicts between regional powers threaten to escalate.

On the one hand, there is Turkey, which sees itself as the protecting power of Azerbaijan. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan supports the offensive against Armenia. And on the other hand, there is Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which supports Armenia and has to avoid a war for its own security interests. Without the backing of their protective powers, neither Azerbaijan nor Armenia would launch a military offensive. With his support for Azerbaijan, Erdogan started a fire in Putin’s front yard. In doing so, he runs the risk of a dramatic deterioration in relations with Moscow.

The region saw many rulers

To understand the complex interrelationships of the conflict, it is first worth taking a look at the history. Nagorno-Karabakh has seen many rulers since late antiquity. Once the Mongols controlled the area, later the Persians, then in the early 19th century the Russians. The region was always ethnically mixed. Turkish Muslims, Arabs, Kurds lived here, but also Armenian Christians. However, several large waves of immigration changed the social fabric. After the genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and the flight that accompanied it, their share of the Nagorno-Karabakh population increased to more than 80 percent.

Armenian soldiers (file image): There is renewed violence in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan. (Source: ITAR-TASS / imago images)

Tensions increased, also because Azerbaijanis living in the area felt close to Turkey. There were bloody pogroms with thousands of deaths. With the collapse of the tsarist empire at the end of the First World War, Armenians and Azerbaijanis raised claims about the area: Armenia referred to the large proportion of Armenians in the population, Azerbaijan to the immobility of the borders and traditional grasslands of the nomads Muslims. After the proclamation of the Soviet republics in Armenia and Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh voluntarily declared itself a member of Azerbaijan, a concession to Turkey with which Moscow had previously concluded a peace treaty. At the same time, the area was granted autonomous status. This situation remained intact until 1989.

The war followed the pogroms

When the power of the Soviet Union began to crumble in the mid-1980s, old divisions reopened and nationalist movements emerged. The Azerbaijanis, who were disadvantaged by the central power in Moscow for decades, perpetrated pogroms against the Armenians living in the republic. The Armenians expelled thousands of Azerbaijanis from Nagorno-Karabakh. After the nationalists tried to seize power in Azerbaijan, Russian tanks arrived on January 20, 1990, accompanied by 160,000 soldiers, and occupied the capital, Baku.

Ilham Aliyev, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, gives a speech to the nation. After fighting with neighboring Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict region, Armenia declared a state of war. (Source: dpa)

Neither the invasion of the Red Army nor the independence of Armenia and Azerbaijan a year later pacified the conflict, on the contrary. More pogroms with dozens of deaths caused the conflict to fully escalate in 1992. Two years of war resulted in more than 25,000 deaths and forced more than a million to flee. In 1994 a ceasefire was signed, which is still in force today, but has been violated time and again.

In the focus of many regional powers

Under international law, the matter is clear: Nagorno-Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan, neither the United Nations nor the European Union recognize the territory, which has been named the Republic of Artsakh since 2017, as independent. De facto, however, it has been governed independently since 1994. In addition to the unresolved border conflict, other factors ensured that the old dispute plunged the region into a new war. There is the strategic situation with Russia fighting for geopolitical power in the north, ambitious Turkey in the west, Iran in the south. But there are also the oil and gas fields in the region, which attract the attention of regional powers, whose exploitation could, however, endanger another war.

Therefore, interest in a new escalation should be limited, certainly Russian. A new hotspot so close to the border directly threatens Russian security interests. The North Caucasus is considered the Achilles heel of Russia. It has always been difficult for the Kremlin to control this part of Russian territory. Chechnya, predominantly Muslim, became the nucleus of Islamist terrorism and there are serious structural and poverty problems. The IS terrorist militia was also able to gain a foothold in the region for their wedding.

Putin wants peace

It takes a lot of force and money from Russia to pacify the North Caucasus. Operations in Syria and Libya also serve to weaken Islamist groups in their own country. Another point is the geopolitical influence in the region, also in Armenia. The Kremlin cannot allow the current conflict in the Caucasus to escalate so that the fire does not spread to its own national territory. There are tensions between ethnic and religious groups in the Russian republics of Dagestan and North Ossetia-Alania.

In an emergency, Russia maintains an air base in Armenia and Moscow will keep its security promises for the country, also not to lose face. There are already first reports of Russian fighter jets in the region. Ultimately, however, a military victory over Azerbaijan is unlikely to be Moscow’s goal, but rather peace.

Turkey is cornering itself

So the fact that Nagorno-Karabakh is experiencing the toughest fighting in years is likely to upset Putin even more. And that Turkey immediately sided with Azerbaijan and raised serious accusations against Armenia. It is currently difficult to track who finally fired the first shot. Both sides blame each other. With hasty positioning, Turkey is losing more and more allies and is now testing the really good relationship with Russia again after the tensions in Libya.

After the genocide of the Armenians, Turkey had a certain duty of care towards its small neighboring country. Despite their different religions, the Turks and the Armenians are closely linked culturally; they lived in a country for a long time. In major Turkish cities like Istanbul, Armenian architecture is still clearly visible. But children do not learn in school that Armenians were driven into the desert and killed by tens of thousands. They have been relocated, it is said. Queries are not allowed.

Most of the time, Turkey’s politics prevented reconciliation with its terrible historical legacy. Erdogan dreams of a neo-Ottoman empire, the current Turkish government sees the Mediterranean region as its sphere of influence. Nationalism is strong in the country and many nationalist movements in Turkey see Azerbaijan as a Muslim brother and Armenia as a Turkish territory that has been occupied. Erdogan sees it in a similar light: “If Armenia immediately leaves the area it occupies, the region will return to peace and harmony,” he said on Monday.

Turkey’s official reasons for supporting the war are clear: on the one hand, Erdogan sees the PKK as a retreat for the Kurdish militia, and on the other, he insists that international law be respected. However, like other powers, the Turkish president invokes international law when it serves his interests. Turkey ignores it in Cyprus and in the Mediterranean conflict.

Turkey and Russia want to ensure their influence in the region: but it is also about security interests. (Source: imago images)

There was a rapprochement between the two countries, but current Turkish policy has no interest in Armenia being economically successful. Borders are narrow, with the exception of Armenians who work as low-wage guest workers in Turkey.

Religion as an advanced argument

In the Caucasus conflict, Ankara has always been behind Azerbaijan, even now. “As always, the Turkish people will support our Azerbaijani brothers by all means,” Erdogan said in the current conflict. The Turkish president has little trouble selling this approach domestically. In addition to the nationalist component, his Islamic-conservative AKP is also fueling a religious conflict between Islam and Christianity, although religion is, at best, a pretext, as legitimation and motivation for a war.

Erdogan’s main concern is power and influence. As in Syria, Libya and in the dispute over natural gas reserves in the Mediterranean, he would like to come to the negotiating table. Your problem: Turkey is currently fighting on many fronts. Probably too many. You can no longer afford this financially. On Monday, the lira sank to a new all-time low.

Erdogan’s dangerous game

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can hardly be resolved militarily. Erdogan must understand this before forcing Russia to intervene militarily. Turkey has influence over Azerbaijan and supporting the attack on Armenia does not lead to a solution.

On the contrary, Turkey is further alienating other allies and causing enormous economic damage. Ankara and Moscow have the option of forcing the conflicting parties to come to the negotiating table. Until they do that, the villages will be destroyed and the people will be killed. This is tragic, because the balance of power in the region means that every human life lost is ultimately useless.