Nathan Shachar: Israel brings weapons to Azerbaijan

Arajik Harutiunjan, leader of the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh republic, which is not recognized by any country other than Armenia, said during a press conference on Sunday:

– Israeli leaders are complicit in the genocide. Israel, which knows what genocide is, now says it did not know what its weapons were used for! What a bad joke!

At the same time, in a statement from the Armenian Defense Ministry, it was stated that Israel continues, through Turkey, to supply weapons and spare parts to Azerbaijan.

Four years ago Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has revealed that he has signed a $ 5 billion contract to supply Israeli weapons. That same year, when Azerbaijan recovered small areas of the disputed territory, Israeli weapons were used on a large scale for the first time in the conflict. But the really interesting aspects of the countries’ cooperation are shrouded in obscurity. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is pleased to take credit for Israel’s cordial relations with Muslim states, speaks quietly about the intimate relationship with Iran’s neighbor Azerbaijan. That Israel from there intercepts Iran’s communications with various delicate moves seems likely and partly explains Iran’s close cooperation with Armenia.

But at least a quarter of all Iranians belong to the Turkish people, especially the Azeris. The Shah of Iran, overthrown by the Islamists in 1979, was Azerbaijani in mother, and the current head of state, Ayatollah Khamenei, is Azeri in father. In Tehran, the three provinces that make up Iranian Azerbaijan in the extreme northwest of the country are always on the alert. The Soviet Union paid for an Azerbaijani separatist movement there after World War II, and many of its inhabitants would prefer to belong to Azerbaijan. During this crisis, Iranian Azeris, including influential ayatollahs, have protested because Shiite Iran supports Christian Armenia against Shiite Azerbaijan.

Israel and Turkey are then a decade like cat and dog, in the case of Gaza, Jerusalem and the growing conflict for the dominance of the eastern Mediterranean. This week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan silenced the Israelis when he announced that Jerusalem is in fact Turkish. But Ankara and Jerusalem now have vital common interests, radiating together in Azerbaijan. 1.2 million barrels of oil pass through the “Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan” oil pipeline every day, which runs from Azerbaijan’s new deposits in the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean. 40 percent of this oil goes to Israel, and Turkey makes a lot of money from its participation in the trade. It is oil revenues that have made it possible for Azerbaijan to prepare so intensively in recent years.

During the 1992-94 war with Armenia, when it lost Nagorno-Karabakh and several other territories, 14 percent of its territory, Azerbaijan had fragile weapons, no organized defense, and was involved in internal political battles. At that time, several great powers and international organizations tried to end the fighting, but it was finally Russia that in May 1994 managed to get the parties to reach a ceasefire.

Even today, it is a matter of prestige that Moscow handles only the conflict between the two former Soviet republics. The ceasefire that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov provoked between the parties on Saturday broke out overnight. Turkey’s wildly belligerent cheers, including a call from Erdogan to “our brother people” to continue to fight and ignore the mediators and the ceasefire, are a bold challenge for the Russians. Erdogan’s closest ally, the far-right MHP leader Devlet Bahceli, has even called on Azerbaijan to strike a chord in the southern strait of Armenia and link the country to its isolated Nachitevan enclave, which sits between Armenia and Iran. . If Azerbaijan attempted such a move, the defense pact between Russia and Armenia would be activated.

Russians have complicated relationships to Turkey in Syria and Libya, where countries have shown pragmatism despite fighting on opposite sides. But when it comes to this conflict, Moscow has less patience with anyone who crosses its plans. Benjamin Netanyahu, who, unlike Erdogan, never unnecessarily annoys Vladimir Putin, is aware of the fragility of the situation and emphasizes that Israel is not part of the conflict. Armenia has recently made it clear that it is also negotiating arms purchases with Israel.

The last time Erdogan came to Russia’s honor was in 2015, and they shot down a Russian plane across the Turkish-Syrian border, it ended with knee-jerk reaction and remorse on his part. But today’s Erdogan is far less cautious and constantly makes selective interpretations of the history of the glorious Ottoman Empire to back up his adventures. Before Russia began its conquests of the Caucasus in the 19th century, the area was a center for the Ottoman and Persian powers. The fact that Azeris speak almost the same language as Turks legitimizes, in the eyes of leading Turkish nationalists, Ankara’s activism.

As cordial as the relations between Jews and Turks were under the Ottoman sultans, so miserable was the relationship between Jews and Armenians. But the two great genocides of the 20th century have gradually created a community, and Armenians have built a lavish monument in the capital, Yerevan, in memory of the victims of both disasters. This summer, Armenia appointed its first ambassador to Israel, who has now been called home in protest. The Jews of Azerbaijan, often called “Jews of the mountains”, speak a kind of Persian. Its most important city, Qirmizi Qasaba, in northern Azerbaijan, is said to be the only fully Jewish city in the world outside of Israel.

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