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How and why Turkey is fueling the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict
How and why Turkey is fueling the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict
By Tom Rogan
September 30, 2020 - 11:30 AM
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has situated himself as the main obstacle to a ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Erdogan is fueling the conflict with arms, fighters, and intelligence support for Azerbaijan.
The challenge is increasingly serious. What began last weekend as a conflict over a disputed territory now threatens to spiral into all-out war.
Numerous Turkish military flights have been transiting between Turkey and Azerbaijan, and Syrian fighters under Turkish authority have been deployed alongside the Azerbaijani armed forces. But while Erdogan claims his support for Baku is simply about assisting that nation in its own defense, the reality is different and darker.
Ultimately, this is not about helping Azerbaijan defend itself. It is about Erdogan seeking to dominate and cow a long-hated adversary, and at the same time, buffer his rising domestic narrative of nationalist expansionism.
Despising Armenia for its international efforts to earn recognition over the 1914-1923 Ottoman imperial genocide against Armenians, Erdogan wants to show its leaders who is boss. By so actively supporting Azerbaijan in this fight, Erdogan shows his own domestic nationalists that the days of Turkish conciliation are over.
Instead, Erdogan has made Turkey a regional power with a new penchant for external aggression. But where much of the international community sees this aggression as an alarming sign of Turkey's displacement from NATO and the Western international order, Turkish nationalists see it as a long-overdue march toward destiny. Again, the domestic motives for Erdogan's action here cannot be underestimated.
The challenge for the region is that this excursion of expanding aggression only fits into a broader pattern. Turkey is currently engaged in an increasingly bellicose showdown with Greece and Egypt in relation to control over the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Turkey's complex relationship with Vladimir Putin is also a continuing concern. On that point, it bears noting that Russia is playing a far more constructive role than Turkey in attempting to bring Azerbaijan and Armenia back to the negotiating table. When the Russians are the more constructive partner for peace, you know something has gone wrong.
As Turkey advances down this dangerous path, the U.S. will have to take an increasingly active stance in establishing new cost calculations for Erdogan. It is intolerable to see Erdogan run a sword through a basic condition of relative Eurasian peace. If he continues to do so, he must be checked. If necessary, by the imposition of allied military force in his path.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...aijan-conflict
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Originally Posted by StonyArabia
Armenia
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