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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared yesterday during a visit to Azerbaijan that Baku’s fight against Armenia has not ended and praised the “glorious victory” of his ally in the bloody conflict with Yerevan.
Erdogan came to Baku to attend the national celebrations of Azerbaijan’s military victory over Armenia in the six-week conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Turkey provided support to Azerbaijan during the clashes, which erupted in late September and claimed more than 5,000 lives.
Azerbaijan’s victory over Armenian separatists in Karabakh last month was a major geopolitical blow through which Erdogan established Turkey’s leadership role in the former Soviet Caucasus region, which the Kremlin considers its area of influence.
The Azerbaijani army exhibited military vehicles and weapons confiscated from Armenia, as well as Turkish drones. Praising the military parade, Turkish television announced that Turkish drones had “reversed” the Karabakh war.
“We are here today … to celebrate this glorious victory,” Arduaan said during the show in Baku, the culmination of Azerbaijan’s victory celebrations.
He added that “the removal of Azerbaijan from its occupation lands does not mean that the fighting is over … the fighting in the political and military spheres will now continue on many other fronts.”
The Azerbaijani and Turkish anthems were played before the military parade, which was attended by Erdogan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev.
Aliyev said that Erdogan’s presence “shows the whole world the uninterrupted friendship between the Azerbaijani and Turkish peoples.”
More than 3,000 soldiers took part in the parade, which was also attended by 2,783 Turkish soldiers, a figure that symbolizes the number of Azerbaijani soldiers who died in the clashes. The show was attended by a Turkish commando squad.
Ankara was accused of sending mercenaries from Syria to reinforce Baku’s army, but denied it.
“Azerbaijan would not have been able to achieve military success in Karabakh without Turkey’s open political support,” said analyst Ilhan Sahinoglu from the Baku-based “Atlas” research center. The fighting ceased after the conclusion of an agreement to stop hostilities under the auspices of Moscow, which dedicates an Armenian military defeat and major field advances to Baku, after Azerbaijani forces approached the larger city of Karabakh, Stepanakert.
The deal sparked outrage in Armenia, where the opposition is now demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
Under the agreement, Armenia ceded control of parts of the region that it lost during fighting to seven adjacent regions that it had controlled during the previous war in the 1990s.
Under the agreement, the Karabakh region, whose status has not been determined, will remain the same, but with a smaller area and a weaker force.
About two thousand Russian blue helmets will be deployed there, with a mission that is renewed every five years. The truce will be supervised in Azerbaijan by the Turkish army. Karabakh separatists split from Baku in a war in the early 1990s, which left 30,000 dead and tens of thousands displaced. And its declaration of independence did not gain international recognition, not even from Armenia.
Meanwhile, four sources, including two familiar US officials, said the United States intends to impose sanctions on Turkey for the purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense system last year. He said the move expected for some time, and likely to enrage Ankara and seriously complicate its relations with the next US administration led by President-elect Joe Biden, could be announced at any time.
He indicated that the sanctions would target Turkey’s Defense Industries Administration and its boss, Ismail Demir.
After announcing the trend to impose US sanctions on Ankara, the Turkish lira yesterday continued its losses against the dollar in late transactions. The pound fell to 7.9290 against the greenback and registered 7.9175 at 1822 GMT, down 1.25 percent from Wednesday’s close.
