As Russia’s footprint slumps, can Turkey anchor Armenia, Azerbaijan to West?

April 28, 2024

ANKARA — While Turkey has thrown its support behind Azerbaijan against Armenia in the territorial conflicts between the two South Caucasian neighbors, there is also a strong push within the Turkish government to normalize ties with Yerevan.

Russia’s declining footprint in the region presents an opportunity for Ankara to anchor the two countries to the Western fold, analysts believe. On April 17, Russia announced that it would withdraw its peacekeepers from Nagorno-Karabakh, the conflicted region that saw six weeks of fighting in 2020 and brief clashes in 2023 between Armenia and Azerbaijan, in which Baku emerged victorious. An autonomous region within Azerbaijan with an Armenian-majority population during Soviet times, Karabakh came under the control of an Armenia-backed administration following a long war between Yerevan and Baku that ended with an Armenian victory in 1994.

On April 19, as part of border demarcation talks, Armenia announced that it would return the four villages it had captured in the 1990s to Azerbaijan. With this announcement, only a few issues remain between the two sides to be settled before a comprehensive peace deal. The major issue among them is how Azerbaijan will connect its territory to the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan along the border of Turkey, through Armenia. Turkey and Azerbaijan have long been pressing to establish this transport link, known as the Zangezur corridor, while Armenia has considered the idea a violation of its sovereignty.

Shooting multiple birds with two stones…..

AL MONITOR