IRIA News

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Azerbaijan’s autonomous Nakhchivan exclave on September 25, 2023, to meet his long-term strategic partner and Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev.

The two leaders laid grounds for the natural gas pipeline and other energy infrastructure-related projects after Baku’s evident victory in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Erdogan flew to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave, a territory nestled between Turkey, Armenia, and Iran. The exclave provides the only land connection between the two brotherly states which are separated by their mutual arch-rival, Armenia.

Erdogan was welcomed by Azerbaijan’s President as he stepped out of his plane. The two leaders signed a total of three economic and energy infrastructure agreements as they attended the groundbreaking ceremony for a new natural gas pipeline that would run from Turkey’s eastern province of Igdir to Sederek in western Azerbaijan.

Bugün aziz gardaşım İlham Aliyev ile Iğdır-Nahçıvan Doğal Gaz Hattı’nın temelini attık.

Proje, Azerbaycan’la enerji alanındaki ortaklığımızı daha da derinleştireceği gibi Avrupa’nın enerji arz güvenliğine de katkı sağlayacaktır. Hayırlı olsun. 🇹🇷🇦🇿 pic.twitter.com/KNce02UMK5

— Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (@RTErdogan) September 25, 2023

The new 85-kilometer-long gas pipeline would have an annual capacity of displacing 500 million cubic meters of gas and a daily capacity of 1.5 million cubic meters.

During the event, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev highlighted the importance of the project, stating that Azerbaijan’s Nakchivan region stayed deprived of gas for some 15 years before it inked an agreement with Iran for supply.

Aliyev complained about the lack of planning by the Soviet Union authorities that divided territories between Armenia and Azerbaijan. “The land link between the main part of Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan (the exclave) was thus cut off,” he said.

During the summit, the Turkish and Azerbaijani leaders discussed materializing a land corridor between the two countries that would run through Armenia. The corridor would also provide a land connection between Azerbaijan’s mainland and Nakhchivan exclave.

Success in Nagorno-Karabakh

Erdogan’s visit comes only days after Baku declared its military victory over the separate groups in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a territory internationally recognized as a part of Azerbaijan but has ethnic Armenians in the majority.

The conflict in the region came to an end after several days of active fighting and decades of back-and-forth skirmishes. Armenia’s government has announced to host and protect the ethnic Armenians who want to migrate from the region after Baku established military control over the territory.

Although Baku has assured that ethnic Armenians can stay in the region and that Azerbaijan would provide them protection, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that his country is preparing to take in more than 120,000 ethnic Armenians who are expected to migrate from the region in the coming days.

Turkey’s President congratulated his Azerbaijani counterpart for the successful completion of the operation in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. “It is a matter of pride that the operation was successfully completed in a short period of time, with utmost sensitivity to the rights of civilians,” Erdogan said during a news conference at the end of his meeting with Aliyev.

He also urged Armenian leadership to take steps to ensure stability in the region. “With the latest victory, new windows of opportunity have opened for a comprehensive normalization in the region,” Erdogan stressed.

Azerbaijan’s Aliyev and Armenia’s Pashinyan are set to meet next month in the Spanish city of Granada to discuss the signing of a peace treaty between the two countries.

Russia welcomes the meeting, US shows concerns

Russia welcomed the news of the meeting between the leaders of Turkey and Azerbaijan. Moscow said that Turkish leadership can play a positive role in normalizing relations between Baku and Yerevan, especially on matters related to the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

“We always hope that all meetings held by the president of Azerbaijan, including those with the Turkish president, will serve to normalize life in Nagorno-Karabakh after what happened,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said following the meeting between Erdogan and Aliyev.

Washington, however, expressed its concerns over the migration and humanitarian crisis that may arise due to Azerbaijan’s recent victory A Senior Biden administration officials traveled from Washington to Armenia a day after ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Samantha Power and U.S. State Department Acting Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasian Affairs Yuri Kim are the first U.S. officials to visit Armenia since the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict took its final turn last week.

“The United States is deeply concerned about reports on the humanitarian conditions in Nagorno-Karabakh and calls for unimpeded access for international humanitarian organizations and commercial traffic,” USAID said in the announcement of the trip.

Decades of fighting

The Nagorno-Karabakh region, also known as Artsakh by Armenia, lies in an area that has a centuries-long history dating back to the times of the Ottoman and Russian empires. The region has always been a Christian stronghold and home to ethnic Armenians.

Azerbaijan claims the region as it falls under its territorial boundaries, while Armenia claims control over it due to the ethnic Armenians who have been living in the region. The two countries have had several armed conflicts on this particular issue, with the latest one resulting in an evident victory for Azerbaijan.

Conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan have resulted in hundreds of deaths. A major episode of fighting came in September 2022, when more than 100 soldiers died from both sides. In 2020, after decades of skirmishes, Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, won a decisive 44-day Second Karabakh War, recapturing territory in and around the Karabakh region. That war ended with a Russian-brokered peace deal, which Armenians accuse Moscow of failing to guarantee.

Armenia is a part of the Russian-led CSTO military alliance; however, Moscow has never intervened in the conflict militarily despite Yerevan’s appeals. Pashinyan blamed Russia publicly again this week for failing to do enough for Armenia. He added that he would review Armenia’s alliance with Moscow following the recent events.

Russia tried to broker several peace deals between the two former Soviet Union states, however, due to Moscow’s inclination and support towards Armenia, none of the deals have ever matured.