Turkey and Azerbaijan will hold joint military exercises today.
The two-day drills will take place in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, as well as the region of Nakhchivan and some territories seized from Armenian control in 2020. They follow a meeting held between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
Last month, Azerbaijan seized the Nagorno-Karabakh region, an enclave home to about 120,000 ethnic Armenians. While Aliyev has promised to guarantee rights and security to ethnic Armenians in the area, decades of mistrust and violence have generated fears that Azerbaijan will soon invade southern Armenia. Erdgoan has expressed support for Azerbaijan’s plans to reintegrate Nagorno-Karabakh and has also supported the possibility of creating a land corridor between western Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan via Armenia.
The drills will bring Turkey and Azerbaijan closer politically and will generate further concerns for ethnic Armenians who remain in Nagorno-Karabakh. Already, 65,000 ethnic Armenians have fled to Armenia. Azerbaijani President Aliyev is expected to work towards creating the “Zangezur Corridor”, a highway linking Azerbaijan with Nakichevan that will likely strain Russo-Armenian relations as Russia intended to prevent the corridor from being created. Although an invasion isn’t likely in the immediate future, further encroachment onto Armenian territory is expected in the medium term.
Source : Foreignbrief
