Nagorno-Karabakh conflict: why Putin avoids confrontation and provokes Erdogan

secondReport on deaths and injuries, photographs and video recordings of circling helicopters and advancing tanks: The armed forces of Azerbaijan and Armenia have been fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh since Sunday morning. They both claim the Caucasus region for themselves.

It is a conflict spanning more than a century in which, after recent skirmishes, both countries blame each other for the renewed escalation. The European Union and the German government called for a ceasefire and immediate negotiations between Baku and Yerevan.

Federal Chancellor Heiko Maas (SPD) described the clashes as alarming. “I call on both parties to the conflict to immediately stop all fighting and, in particular, the bombing of towns and cities,” Maas said. His ministry said the federal government was in contact with both sides through local embassies.

The dispute may be internally motivated, but the conflicting parties each have a powerful foreign ally. The Muslim majority of Azerbaijan is supported by Turkey, every year large sums of money flow from Ankara to the country’s army.

Russia sees itself as the protective power of the former Armenian Soviet Republic. The Russian armed forces have had a military base in the country since 1995, just 15 kilometers from the Turkish border.

While Moscow has so far called on both sides to stop the fire and propose the stabilization of the Baku-Yerevan talks, the Foreign Ministry announced in Ankara that it strongly condemned the “Armenian attack.” Armenia, in turn, accused Turkey of supporting Azerbaijan with weapons and personnel. “Turkish military experts are fighting side by side with Azerbaijan. They use Turkish weapons, including drones and fighter jets, ”he said.

The situation shows that Nagorno-Karabakh is fighting against a Turkish-Azerbaijani alliance. Armenia and Turkey mutually assumed the task of recruiting foreign mercenaries. More recently, there have been reports that Turkey is said to have sent thousands of Syrian mercenaries to Nagorno-Karabakh.

The spokesman for the ruling Turkish AKP party, Ömer Celik, rejected the accusations. Armenia is disturbed by Turkish solidarity with Azerbaijan and is spreading lies, she tweeted. The fact that Ankara advances verbally while Moscow declines is mainly due to strategic reasons.

Russia is already militarily involved in the Syria and Libya hotspots and is in a deep diplomatic crisis with the EU due to the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexej Navalny. Given this explosive situation, President Vladimir Putin is likely to want to avoid getting into another major conflict.

Turkey, on the other hand, does not shy away from any conflict with the EU under President Erdogan and is becoming increasingly aggressive in terms of foreign policy. Ankara troops are also active in Syria and Libya, and the resource exploitation conflict with Greece and the EU is reaching a critical point in the eastern Mediterranean. Despite international protests, Turkey continues to search for oil and gas deposits there and is already threatening Greece with war.

The interference in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan fits in perfectly with Erdogan’s efforts to expand Turkey’s international influence and thus tie in with the Ottoman tradition.

Erdogan’s commitment to foreign policy can score points with the population, and even receives some applause from the opposition, as happened in the conflict in the Mediterranean or in Syria.

Major pipelines are at risk

Unlike Russia, Turkey has one thing to lose most of all: Major pipelines supplying the country with cheap oil and gas from Azerbaijan run close to the conflict line. They are essential for Turkey because they reduce its dependence on Russian resources. A new export gas pipeline from Russia to Turkey via the Black Sea was opened with TurkStream earlier in the year.

Around three-quarters of Turkey’s energy needs are currently covered by imports. The Trans-Anatolian TANAP gas pipeline in particular plays an important role. It is fed by a trough that could be threatened by fighting. The completed Transadria gas pipeline (TAP), which will become fully operational this year and will bring gas from Azerbaijan to Europe, is also linked to the smooth operation of the gas pipelines.

For Turkey as a transit country, that would be a great victory in energy policy poker with Europe. If pipelines in the region were in jeopardy from the conflict, Russia would play cards, eliminating a nasty rival project for its own pipelines.

Also for this reason, Moscow’s reactions, as with the last outbreak of the conflict in July, are likely to be fairly calm. “Now the most important thing is to stop the fighting,” Putin’s press spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. This is not the time to find out “who is right and who is wrong.” While Ankara is clearly on Baku’s side, the Kremlin is demonstratively holding back, although at first glance it would have every reason to support Yerevan.

Armenia is a member of the Russian-led military alliance CSTO and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Russia has a military base near the capital, Yerevan, with nearly 4,000 soldiers, air defense systems and fighter jets. Plans to further improve the base were announced a year ago. Just a few days ago, the Russian and Armenian militaries also completed joint exercises as part of the great Russian “Caucasus 2020” maneuver.

But Russia’s security guarantees for Armenia are a “leaky umbrella”, as an Armenian politician once put it. The strategy in the South Caucasus does not depend on a single actor. To the chagrin of many Armenians, Moscow also maintains good relations with Baku.

Baku buys Russian weapons

The country has no interest in joining the Russian-led alliances. However, Azerbaijan is making no move to join the western military bloc, despite its close ties with NATO country Turkey. That clearly suits Moscow’s interests.

Russia is one of the top five foreign investors in Azerbaijan, and Baku is paying with massive purchases of Russian weapons. In Azerbaijan’s huge armaments budget of $ 24 billion in the years 2014 to 2018, Russia’s imports rank first, while friend Turkey only ranks third behind Israel.

Baku’s complaints about Russia’s arms deliveries to Armenia have grown louder recently: In August, the authoritarian ruling head of state Ilham Aliyev spoke to Putin by phone. The OSCE has also criticized Moscow’s arms deliveries to the breakaway Karabakh province. But Baku is clear that Moscow will not take sides so quickly.

Since Moscow, as mediator, achieved a ceasefire in the conflict in 1994, the supposedly frozen dispute remains an important lever in the region. Although Moscow advocates for Russian peacekeeping troops in the OSCE-sponsored peace process, neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan have shown interest so far.

In reality, Russia can live quite well with the status quo. By exporting arms to both sides, Moscow believes it can control the degree of escalation and presents itself as a regulatory power on the threshold of the major geopolitical players in the Middle East.

Regardless of Baku’s declarations of intent, NATO would not be interested in accepting a country with unresolved territorial conflicts. And Armenia, which conducts most of its foreign trade with the EU, shows no interest in a geopolitical turn to the west, mostly due to the ongoing conflict, because Russia cannot be dispensed with as a protecting power.

In the end, neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan is interested in Russia choosing a side, believes Sergei Markedonov, an expert on Moscow from the South Caucasus. “That would mean the severance of relations with the other party,” he wrote in a post for the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank.

And that would be a new geopolitical reality for which neither Yerevan nor Baku are prepared, let alone the Europeans.