We warn of a war in the Caucasus

Baku and Yerevan seemed to be about to engage in a war, after violent confrontations broke out yesterday between the Azerbaijani army and Armenian forces in Nagorny Karabakh, which led to the fall of soldiers and civilians from both sides. The outbreak of a confrontation of this kind between the two neighboring countries in the Caucasus, which were within the former Soviet Union, would prompt the two regional powers, Russia and Turkey, to intervene, and the signals of which have already emerged through the escalating statements made by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which This coincided with reports of sending mercenaries from Syria to Azerbaijan to take part in the fighting.

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The Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict dates back to the beginning of the last century, when the Soviet authorities annexed Nagorny Karabakh, which has an Armenian majority, to Azerbaijan in 1921. However, he declared its independence in 1991, with the support of Armenia, which was followed by a war that led to the killing of 30 thousand people and the displacement of hundreds Thousands. Despite the signing of a ceasefire agreement in 1994, and the establishment of Russian-American-French mediation under the name “Minsk Group”, intermittent armed clashes still exist, the most important of which was the one that took place in April 2016, which killed 110 people. While the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh is fueling tensions, Baku has, in recent years, used its oil reserves to spend heavily on armaments, in parallel with Turkey’s support, while Armenia remains close to Russia, which has a base in it. The military expenditures of Azerbaijan, the oil-producing state, is much greater than Armenia’s entire budget. However, Yerevan belongs to a political-military coalition led by Moscow, the Collective Security Treaty Organization.
In connection with the recent clash, the two conflicting countries exchanged accusations, as Armenia announced that Azerbaijani forces attacked civilian areas in Nagorny Karabakh, including the region’s capital, Stepanakert, in an operation that resulted in the killing of a woman and a child, while the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense said that Armenian forces violated the endowment. The shooting, adding that it launched “a counter-operation to curb Armenian fighting activities and ensure the safety of the population,” using tanks, artillery missiles, military aircraft and drones. In line with the latter’s statements, Turkey was quick to hold Yerevan responsible for the outbreak of violence. “We strongly condemn the aggression of Armenia against Azerbaijan,” Presidential Spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Twitter. Armenia violated the ceasefire by attacking civilian sites, expressing his country’s “full” support for Baku.

The calls for calm coincided with the declaration by Armenia and Azerbaijan of martial law

On the other hand, Russia announced that its Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had spoken with his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, stressing “the need for a ceasefire as soon as possible,” while a Turkish diplomatic source said that the two officials discussed “Armenian aggression.” Likewise, Russian President Vladimir Putin called for an end to the confrontations. “It is important to make all necessary efforts to avoid an escalation of the confrontation, but the main thing is the necessity of putting an end to the confrontations,” he said, according to a statement by the Kremlin after a phone call with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. The brief statement added that “the Russian side expressed its grave concern about the renewed fighting on a large scale.”
The calls for calm, which were also made by France, Germany and the European Union, coincided with the declaration by Armenia and Azerbaijan of martial law. In this context, Hikmat Hajiyev, the spokesperson for the Azerbaijani presidency, told reporters that “martial law will take effect from midnight, in addition to a curfew from 21:00 until 6:00 hours” in Baku and other cities and regions near the front line in Karabakh. Azerbaijan also announced that its forces entered seven villages under the control of the Armenians during the violent confrontations, which was denied by Armenia, which declared, in parallel, martial law and general mobilization. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said, “Prepare to defend our holy land,” accusing Azerbaijan of “declaring war” against its people.

Turkish investment in the conflict
Turkey, which did not play a direct role in the outbreak of the recent clash, was the first to invest in it, for many reasons and for many goals. This was embodied in the news that hundreds of mercenaries were sent from Syria to Azerbaijan to fight. Although Hikmat Hajiyev, assistant to the President of Azerbaijan for foreign policy, denied the truth of this news, previous reports indicated that Turkey began transferring hundreds of Syrian mercenaries to its ally Azerbaijan, in addition to conducting joint military exercises with Baku, and preparing the ground for establishing a Turkish military base there near the border With Armenia.
This comes while the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is still opening new fronts in front of his country, without closing any of them, in line with his expansionist ambitions. A “strategy” Many analysts do not hesitate to describe it as political stupidity, placing it in the category of unpredictable behavior. However, a number of observers go to link the recent Turkish moves to obscure the stuttering of Ankara in Libya, while others see that Erdogan is trying to take advantage of the existing situation in order to obtain a settlement in return in Syria and Libya, which they consider an unattainable goal, nothing more than seeking To him being a “incomplete step.”
On the other hand, while the Turkish escalation represents a burden on the home where the economic crisis escalates, analysts believe that Erdogan’s behavior stems from his own internal accounts related to the nationalist bidding and army, especially that the Azerbaijani people belong, ethnically, to the Turkish race, and that the Azerbaijani language is considered One of the closest languages ​​to Turkish. In this regard, they point out that Azerbaijan is an important part for Turkey in a number of small and large alliances, whose components bind together the bonds of cultural geography, such as the “Turkish Council” which was established in 2009 to include a number of Turkish-speaking countries, such as Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. And Azerbaijan, the “tripartite alliance”, northeastern Anatolia, which includes Azerbaijan and Georgia, in addition to Turkey, and the “hexagonal alliance”, which includes, along with the previous trio, Iran, Pakistan and Turkmenistan.
The escalation in the Caucasus, if the Turkish president does what he wants, will strengthen Ankara’s influence in a vital region through which global gas pipelines extend, and enhance its balance in exchange for Moscow. It also allows Erdogan to take revenge on Armenia in some way, especially since Yerevan succeeded in stigmatizing his country, when major countries in the world recognized, during the past years, the Ottoman Genocide of Armenians during the First World War. In the broader picture, it can be said that this front embodies, as others, the dream of “leadership” for Erdogan, and feeds in his imagination the idea of ​​reviving the old Ottoman Empire.

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