Last month, I became the first Israeli businessman to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Azerbaijan Investment Company, the sovereign investment arm of the Azeri government, on the historic occasion of the opening of the Azerbaijan Trade and Tourism Office in Tel Aviv.
This paper covers the South Caucasus policy of Turkey after the 44-Day War be- tween Azerbaijan and Armenia in 2020. The aim of the research is to investigate the role of Turkey, which supported Azerbaijan politically and morally in the war, in the South Caucasus. This article concludes that, after this war, a new geopolitical situation has emerged in the South Caucasus region. In this new geopolitics, Turkish soldiers have been deployed, alongside those from Russia, in the Joint Monitoring Centre to observe the ceasefire in the Karabakh region of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Turkey became a kind of guarantor of the liberated Azerbaijani territories through the Shusha Declaration signed between Turkey and Azerbaijan. Additionally, according to the trilateral statement of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Russia that was signed on 11 January, it was decided to establish a new corridor that is planned to pass through Armenia to connect Turkey with Azerbaijan. Moreover, Turkey–Azerbaijan strategic relations have entered a new phase in terms of economic, military, and defence industry technologies. In short, after the 44-Day War, Turkey gained an advantageous position in the South Caucasus and Central Asia.
If ever there was an oxymoron, it is Russian peacekeepers. As the last three decades in Eurasia demonstrates, Moscow does not resolve conflicts; it manufactures them to its own benefit.
The 44-day war between Armenian forces and Azerbaijan brings about new debates. Azerbaijan liberated its lands that had been under Armenian occupation for about 30 years.
Another Armenian myth is crumbling before our eyes. The most economically backward state in the South Caucasus, which has isolated itself from all major economic projects successfully implemented in the region. Armenia. A country heading towards a financial crisis and living on credit. Again, Armenia. The size of its external debt has already approached 70% of its GDP.
Turkey is bolstering defense cooperation with Azerbaijan as it seeks to double down on the military success of last year’s war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
The US Department of State released a report overviewing the current human rights situation in Armenia for the period from 2019 to 2021. It was compiled from the reports published by a number of international non-governmental organizations, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, Freedom House, International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), and contains references to the US Department of State, Human Rights Report 2020, 2020 EU Annual Report on Human Rights and Democracy, World Economic Forum and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).
The Kavkaz Uzel news agency has surveyed the opinion of experts in Yerevan and Baku about a possible future role for the OSCE Minsk Group in talks between them.
I also thank the military forces of NATO Allies, in particular Turkey, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and our partner Azerbaijan, for their vital role in securing the airport. And I thank all the Allies who have today pledged to receive Afghans at risk.
Armenia’s recent general election saw Prime Minister Nikolai Pashinyan return to office with a substantially increased majority. Instinctively a moderate and pragmatic voice, Pashinyan has in the past found himself having to make concessions to his own ‘ultras’ whose only vision for their nation is one of isolation and eternal grievance against Turkey.
A certain part of Russian society has a somewhat skewed picture of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, which found its just and logical resolution in the fall of 2020, and the sympathies of some ordinary Russian citizens sometimes lie with the Armenian side. There are several reasons for this.
Pan-Turkism is seeing a revival as an increasingly ambitious Turkey asserts its influence in the post-Soviet world, setting off alarm bells in Moscow in particular.
Following the Second Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan and Turkey’s support for the latter in that conflict, Ankara has been pushing for Baku to become more involved in Turkish geopolitical plays.
The November 2020 and January 2021 declarations of the presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia called for the unfreezing of transportation routes including most importantly the one between Azerbaijan and Azerbaijan’s non-contiguous autonomy, Nakhichevan, and between Armenia and Iran.
2020 was a tumultuous year in the South Caucasus region that saw a widespread of COVID-19 pandemic and a new war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
On July 27, the parliamentary speakers of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Pakistan signed a strategic partnership document—the “Baku Declaration”—in Baku, Azerbaijan, which creates a new format for political cooperation between the three states.
On Saturday (!), August 14, 2021, President of Poland Andrzej Duda signed the “restitution law”. Whether it was a deliberate act or a coincidence, but it was on a day sacred for the Jewish people that the surviving prisoners of Nazi death camps, as well as descendants of the six million Holocaust victims, who live today across a vast territory from Canada to Australia, found out that Poland took away their right to compensation and reclamation of the property confiscated from their families in the Holocaust and after the war.
Armenia-Azerbaijan relations are again getting dangerously tense, argues Vasif Huseynov in this opinion piece for KarabakhSpace.eu. “It is therefore urgent for the international community to take all possible measures to ensure the implementation of the ceasefire accord of 10 November 2020 and bring the sides to the negotiations table.”
People tried to manipulate each other since ancient times, and various methods were used for these purposes, such as fear of curses, natural forces, higher powers (gods, religion), or deliberate spread of rumors/false information, in order to mislead the opponents or strike terror into their hearts, etc.
Geopolitical self-interest has no place when it comes to true peace-making. Armenia and Azerbaijan are learning that the hard way.
The Azerbaijani authorities held a groundbreaking ceremony on July 1 for the planned Alat Free Economic Zone (AFEZ), which will be linked to the new Baku International Seaport also under construction near the village of Alat, around 50 miles south of the capital of Baku.
On July 28, The United States’ House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2022 Foreign Aid Bill proposed by Congressional Armenian Caucus co-chair Frank Pallone to restrict US foreign military financing and training assistance to Azerbaijan.
Baku's over-reliance on oil has long been acknowledged, but the Covid-19 pandemic has only served to highlight the urgent need to diversity its economy.
One of the most important consequences of the November 2020 and January 2021 joint Armenian-Azerbaijan-Russian declarations ending the latest round of fighting between Yerevan and Baku was a commitment to the reopening of transportation corridors in the South Caucasus region.
