Weekly update

6 February

Turkey has reignited its war of words with the US after a senior Turkish minister accused Washington of being behind the country’s failed 2016 coup, reported arabnews.com. Suleyman Soylu, Turkey’s interior minister, blamed the US for orchestrating the failed overthrow attempt and for hosting preacher Fethullah Gulen, who has been accused of controlling the uprising through a deep cover network hidden within the Turkish state. Washington further fanned the flames in statements claiming that Turkey initiated a “disproportionate crackdown” on domestic student protests. The accusations come as Turkey looks to repair strained ties with the US following last year’s sanctions over the sale of Russia’s S-400 air defense system. Ankara has opened several diplomatic channels with regional rivals, including Greece, France and Israel, and has halted aggressive moves in the Mediterranean as a goodwill gesture to the Biden administration.

5 February

Turkish President Erdoğan’s objective was to use Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as leverage for membership in the Minsk Group. The Minsk Group spearheads the OSCE efforts to find a peaceful solution to the frozen Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and shares influence in the South Caucasus. According to intpolicydigest.org, if successful, Erdoğan would assume a greater role in regional geopolitics. Russian President Putin had his own agenda: increasing Russia’s military presence on its Southern Caucasus borders. The Russian Gabala Radar Station existed in Azerbaijan. It was an early warning system for missile attacks on Russia’s southern periphery, as well as the other Caucuses states. Russia attempted to maintain the status quo by offering to train Azerbaijan’s troops and to teach them how to repair military equipment in Russia but Azerbaijan rejected the offer, stating that after the USSR’s dissolution, the Gabala Radar Installation became its sovereign property. Azerbaijan then approached NATO about training its military. While not a NATO member, since 1991, Azerbaijan has belonged to the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. NATO offered to have neighboring Turkey assist in training Azerbaijan‘s military personnel. For Russia, expanding access to ports to transport oil and weapons, and to engage in military operations has been a priority. Azerbaijan offers Russia access to three major ports and transports its energy resources via the Russian pipeline to Novorossiysk.

4 February

Artsakh search and rescue teams have been unable to resume their operations to find casualties of the 2020 war because Azerbaijani authorities continue to impose bans on those operations for unknown reasons, said asbarez.com. According to Artsakh Rescue service, Azerbaijani authorities indefinitely banned Artsakh rescuers from resuming their operations on Wednesday without giving any explanation. The missions are conducted every day, with the last one taking place on Tuesday. On Thursday, the Artsakh rescue service reported that Azerbaijani authorities were not allowing the search and rescue missions to operated citing “various kinds of projects that the Azerbaijanis are implementing in the areas that have fallen under their control.” The Armenian military said on Thursday that there have been no border incidents along the Armenian’s border with Azerbaijan, reporting that line of contact was in “stable operational situation.” Meanwhile, representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross visited on Monday and Tuesday four Armenian detainees, including civilians and servicemen, being held in Azerbaijan. Amatuni said the captives were given an opportunity to communicate with their family members, Amatuni adding that during the visit, the ICRC representatives monitored the detention conditions and the health of the captives.

3 February

For 44 days last autumn, Armenia fought a tooth-and-nail defense against Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, home to thousands of Armenians. In line with oc-media.org on 27 September, Azerbaijani forces launched a full-scale military offensive in Karabakh, forcing civilians from their homes with artillery and ground forces, and overwhelming Armenian defences with the help of Turkish-made drones. Several months later, thousands of soldiers are dead or missing, and many civilians are displaced. Numerous war crimes have been documented. A Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement, announced in November, has tentatively paused the fighting, recognizing Azerbaijan’s gains in Karabakh and the ‘buffer zone’ of territory that surrounds it. In the space of six weeks, Armenia’s gains from the war it fought with Azerbaijan in the 1990s have been largely undone. For Armenia, the effective loss of Karabakh has caused a significant political crisis, with the country’s reformist government coming under huge pressure to win the war. Armenia’s current Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was elected in a landslide after the 2018 ‘Velvet Revolution’, but support for the once-popular revolutionary leader has wavered over the course of the war, which many Armenians have seen as existential. Azerbaijani troops are now stationed deep in the heart of what was once Armenian Karabakh and the ‘buffer zone’, and are visible on Armenia’s official borders. And suddenly, the once porous borders between Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh and the buffer zone have hardened. Economic development and the opening up of cross-border transport links, offer a potential route out of the crisis.

2 February

Turkey and Russia have opened a joint military facility in Azerbaijan to help monitor the ceasefire with Armenia, a stark indicator of the shifting geopolitics in the region, reports eurasianet.org. The center formally opened on January 30, near the village of Giyameddinli in the Aghdam region. Staffed by an equal number of Russian and Turkish troops – 60 on each side – it is novel in a number of ways. It represents the first formal Turkish military presence in the Caucasus in more than a century, and the first Russian military presence on Azerbaijani-controlled territory since Baku effectively kicked the Russians out of a radar facility in Gabala eight years ago. It also is a rare case of direct military cooperation between the two historical foes who have lately become custodians of a shaky security condominium in their shared neighborhood.  But according to a dispatch from the center in the Russian newspaper Izvestiya, the primary mission appears to be as a base for surveillance drones to monitor the new ceasefire lines between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces.

1 February

The rights of the citizens of the Republic of Armenia should be the basis of decisions when engaged in the process of determining the borders; it is necessary to take into account all the mistakes made in the past, Ombudsman of Armenia Arman Tatoyan said in a statement on Facebook. According to armenpress.am “When in 1923, in order to artificially separate Armenia from Artsakh, “Red Kurdistan” was formed, the border disputes with Zangezur of the Armenian SSR intensified. One of the main concerns consistently raised by the people of Zangezur at the time was the issue of the rights of the villagers to the lands, along with the winter and summer time pastures and gardens. For example, in October of 1925, a member of the State Committee of the Armenian SSR, A. Yerznkyan, by way of a reference stated that the areas West of the border with Meghri and Karyagino (Jabrail) were mainly winter pastures, which were actually used by the residents of the villages of Kapan and Meghri without grasslands. One of the main reasons was that without these pastures, the livestock of the villages in the referenced regions would be paralyzed. In another case, the head of the local commission for demarcation of the borders of Zangezur "between the provinces of Kurdistan," Ya. Kochetkov, by way of an example, based his disagreement with the Azeri proposals on the village of Teghut on the fact that it is one of the districts of Shvanidzor, where the lands (gardens and pastures) are so intertwined that it will be impossible to separate them.

30  January

There was a meeting of the trilateral Working Group co-chaired by the vice-premiers of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Armenia and the Russian Federation, reported 1lurer.am. During the meeting, the main areas of joint work arising from the implementation of paragraph 9 of the Statement of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia and the President of the Russian Federation dated November 9, 2020, as well as paragraphs 2, 3, 4 of the Statement dated January 11, 2021 were considered.

The parties agreed to create the following expert subgroups:

- for rail, road and combined transport;

- on issues of ensuring transportation, including security, border, customs, sanitary, veterinary, phytosanitary and other types of control.

The parties agreed to complete the formation of expert subgroups by February 2, 2021 and hold their first meetings by February 5, 2021.

It was decided to hold the next meeting of the trilateral Working Group in Moscow. The date will be agreed by the co-chairs in a working order".

Sources: arabnews.com; intpolicydigest.org; asbarez.com; oc-media.org; eurasianet.org; armenpress.am; 1lurer.am