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Russia, which protects the de facto situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, has the power to put an end to hostile camps, but may not have had the intervention of its regional rival, Turkey. And the South Caucasus region could easily degenerate into a proxy (arena) war on the altar of sacrifice of the geopolitical aspirations of regional powers.
Historical hatred
It is worth starting with a very quick historical overview. Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan was still established in the Stalinist Soviet Union on the territory of Azerbaijan. According to some historians, Stalin ordered the creation of the then predominantly Armenian territory in Azerbaijan to reassure Turkey with this gesture and lure it towards communism. According to most, this was only part of the Soviet dictator’s “divide and rule” strategy to persuade the Armenians to cooperate with the Soviet Union. Whatever its intentions, it became an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, proclaiming its independence and its intention to unite with Armenia as the Soviet Union weakened. However, the measure was rejected by Azerbaijan: as a result, a six-year bloodbath began. The war claimed some 30,000 lives and hundreds of thousands of refugees. In many cases, the parties to the conflict committed atrocities amounting to genocide against each other’s populations.
The war was stopped by a ceasefire brokered by Russia, which supports the Armenians, but the ceasefire can also be seen as an Armenian triumph. Nagorno-Karabakh remains as a separatist enclave within Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders, and Armenian soldiers forgot to withdraw from the surrounding areas, thus being able to bid farewell to seven other Baku regions. It has lost fifteen percent of its territory to Azerbaijan. From the Azeri point of view, the Armenians are occupying part of their country.
We film a bit, then everyone goes home. Oh no…
Several observers took the position in the early days of the conflict that there would be another shooting in a few days. Both countries have been hit by the coronavirus epidemic, the economy has slowed, and people’s dissatisfaction has reached its peak. As soon as the world erupted, the second wave of the epidemic arrived.
Removing the standing water from Nagorno-Karabakh proves to be a great opportunity to stoke nationalist sentiments and divert attention from the real issues. The armed forces clash over an uninhabited area, everyone shows that then they do not surrender to the others, and then Yerevan and Baku harvest the bay leaves of PR. Ilham Aliyev In the case of the President of Azerbaijan, it was almost necessary to prepare the environment for war, because in addition to the weakening of the economy due to falling oil prices and the growing discontent of the people with his authoritarian rule, the protesters stormed into the Baku parliament after the July clashes. .
But in the early days of the conflict, military equipment had already been deployed (and fired), not fired from the trenches into nowhere.
In a matter of days, civilian-inhabited settlements came under fire.
The Armenians launched an artillery strike against the second largest city in Azerbaijan, Ganja, while the Azeris bombarded the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, Stepbank, with drones, among others. The opposing parties have aligned their means of killing and, for the moment, are measuring the blows against each other in a limited way but already “involving” the civilian population.
The signs were there, just no one noticed
More recently, a few days of war broke out between Armenians and Azeris in 2016, but the fighting was limited to the line of disputed territories. A state of war was not ordered and Stepanker was not bombed. In July this year, the situation turned hot again, which analysts said was the headwind of the current fighting. By then, clashes were already taking place on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan and, although the conflict ended again with a ceasefire, the situation became a resting place rather than urging a solution.
The so-called “Karabakh pendulum” did not recede in the direction of diplomacy and negotiation as before, but stayed there on the side of war. There was an omission: the international community did not bring the opposing parties to the negotiating table, so the July clashes became the main test of the current fighting. Baku and Yerevan avoided negotiations citing the corona virus, although the leaders of the two countries were able to meet with other foreign dignitaries.
Perhaps the international community, after almost thirty years of unsuccessful negotiations, has not taken seriously the Caucasus of its Caucasus neighbors, such as Russia, which has influence over both countries and ensures that the situation does not deteriorate because it has interest in the de facto situation. But they did not take into account Turkey and its geopolitical aspirations.
Ankara claims a place in the area
After the summer clashes, Turkey and Azerbaijan began joint military exercises. Last year, Ankara sold various military equipment to Azerbaijan, considered a sister nation. At this year’s session of the UN General Assembly
RECEP TAYYIP Erdogan THE PRESIDENT OF TURKEY RATED ARMENIA AS THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE TO SUSTAINABLE PEACE IN SOUTH CAUCASUS.
After the fighting in July, the then Azerbaijani Foreign Minister, Elmar Mammadyarov, resigned, considered an optimistic diplomat. He is confident that Prime Minister Nikol Pasinyan, who will come to power in the wake of the Armenian velvet revolution, will be open to solving the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh through diplomacy. He had to be disappointed, as Pasinyan turned out to be more difficult than he thought. The Armenian prime minister demanded that the Nagorno-Karabakh separatists be represented in the negotiations.
Not to mention that he stated:
Karabah is part of Armenia.
The Armenians may have sensed the Turkish intentions, as observers said signs of a conflict were emerging on both sides. Among other things, both sides reinforced their military presence, so neither of them was unexpectedly affected by the escalation of the situation. It’s important to note that, to this day, it is disputed who fired first, but analysts said it was only a matter of time before someone pulled the trigger.
Ankara assured Azerbaijan almost immediately of the outbreak of fighting and demanded that Armenia leave the “occupied territories”. Erdogan also stated that Turkey
he stays with his friend and brother, Azerbaijan.
Ankara took this so seriously that it reportedly sent military advisers to the Azerbaijani troops, indeed, it sent the Syrian fighters to the side of the brother people’s armed forces. The extent to which Turkey has harmed itself in the conflict in the South Caucasus is not yet known, though it is a warning sign that Yerevan says a Turkish F-16 shot down one of its fighter jets.
Like a hump on the back
Russia has traditionally supported Christian Armenians against Muslim Azeris, but in recent decades it has forged increasingly close ties with Baku. It is also in the interest of the current situation: Nagorno-Karabakh is rich in mineral resources, precious metals, among others, while Azerbaijan is rich in natural gas and oil. And the de facto state is easy to maintain by
BOTH COUNTRIES ARE FEDERALS OF RUSSIA AND ALSO SUPPLIERS OF WEAPONS.
Both armies are equipped with Soviet-type weapons. This is a lucrative way to keep the peace, at least to keep the conflict under control.
In recent years, however, Turkey has become increasingly bloodthirsty in pursuit of its own geopolitical interests. She first assumed a bigger role in Syria and then sent troops to Libya, and not long ago there was a fight with Greece over the potential exploitation of natural gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean. With the drag of Libya and the Mediterranean, Ankara became a splinter in the eyes of Paris, although it did step on the corn of Moscow. In Syria and Libya, Ankara supports countries other than Russia and is now trying to put down roots in the South Caucasus to the detriment of the Russians.
However, Turkey has the same interest in bringing its own territory under its influence, especially if the brotherly people of the north, the Azeris, are sitting in oil and gas fields. It is almost gratifying that the Nagorno-Karabakh region, internationally considered an Azerbaijani territory, is rich in valuable mineral resources.
There is a basis for Turkish aspirations in the South Caucasus: Ankara can easily find an ally in Georgia, which has to deal with Moscow due to the breakup of South Ossetia and Abkhazia with the support of Russia. Yet another question is how Georgian Christians would relate to a Turkish advance.
AT THE SAME TIME THEREFORE, THE SOUTHERN CAUCASUS HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BECOME A PROFESSIONAL REACH OF THE PROXY WAR OF A TUSNED FEDERAL NETWORK OF ABOUT 150 THOUSAND PEOPLE.
The prescription of hate
In any case, Turkey’s involvement has given new impetus to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.
An armed conflict reaches the boiling point of war when the number of civilian casualties begins to rise rapidly. Ankara and Baku are also demanding that Armenians leave the “occupied territories”. When they bombard the population, they usually want them to flee. In the worst case, the goal is to destroy them.
However, Armenians have a very bad memory because of the Turks:
the Armenian genocide, which Turkey, along with Azerbaijan, still denies.
In the face of Turkish boots, the conflict that could still escalate could turn into an existential war for the Armenians. The Armenians, on the other hand, will not allow the Turks to commit genocide against them for a century. Observers say they will resist Turkish support for the largest Azerbaijani forces until their last blood.
And Moscow, meanwhile, can scratch its head. The Turks saw another area that is strategically important to them, but this time closer to the Russian border. If Moscow cannot reach a ceasefire between Armenians and Azeris within a set timeframe, it could easily be necessary to redeploy its armed forces to another front. Which means not only that the military presence in Armenia must be increased, but also that in the other countries where Moscow and Ankara clash, the Turks must be taken into account.
There is still the possibility of avoiding an all-out war. However, the processes are moving in a different direction at the moment.
(Cover image: A Karabakh army soldier fires an artillery cannon at the Azeris in the former Nagorno-Karabakh on 4 October 2020. Photo: Brochure / AFP)
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