Although Turkey assured last week that it had had no role in the military operation carried out by Azerbaijan to take control of the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Ankara seems to want to take advantage of the situation to favor its interests. It is no coincidence that the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, held the first meeting after the conflict with his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev in the republic of Nakhchivan, an Azeri enclave separated from the rest of the country by Armenia and bordering Turkey and Iran.
Azerbaijan's victory against the Armenians upsets the delicate balance of power in the South Caucasus region, a mosaic of ethnicities crisscrossed by oil and gas pipelines where Russia, the United States, Turkey and Iran vie for influence.
After the success of Azerbaijan's military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, another dispute looms on the horizon with Armenia: the territory of Nakhchivan. Like Nagorno-Karabakh, where ethnic Armenians felt isolated from Armenia, Nakhchivan is territorially separated from the rest of Azerbaijan. It represents around 6% of the country's territory, but is separated by a strip of about 40 kilometers of Armenian territory. It also borders Turkey and Iran, close allies of Azerbaijan, and its population is about 460,000 people, the vast majority of whom are Azeris, but also some ethnic Russians.
Erdogan intends to capitalize on regional turbulence to advance his plans to create a trade route through the Caucasus. "Windows of opportunity for regional normalization have opened and must be seized," Erdogan said during an inauguration ceremony for a gas pipeline that will transport gas from Turkey to Nakhchivan. "Armenia must take the hand of peace that is extended to it."
The leader backed Azerbaijan's demand to create a transport corridor through southern Armenia to its republic - the so-called Zangezur Corridor - something that could increase tensions with Armenians just after last week's attack in Nagorno. Karabakh that ended with the surrender of ethnic Armenians in less than two days and that is causing an exodus of thousands of refugees through the Lachin corridor to Armenian territory.
On his flight back to Turkey, Erdogan said that if Armenia did not allow the trade corridor to pass through its territory, Iran was favorable to the idea of allowing it to pass through its territory.
Turkey sees the corridor to Azerbaijan as key to its aspirations to become a trade route linking London and Beijing via rail and road.
At the same time, Erdogan and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinián are in talks to establish formal diplomatic relations and open their border, which Turkey closed in 1993 in support of Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. However, relations between both countries are historically tense due to Ankara's refusal to recognize the genocide of between one and a half and two million Armenians carried out by the Turks between 1915 and 1923.
Yerevan rejects the idea outright and claims that the creation of such a corridor does not exist in the Russian-brokered truce agreement that ended the 2020 war between the neighboring states. This document only provides for the opening of borders and transport links, including in Nakhchivan, although the Azeris do not interpret this point of the agreement in this way and have been demanding the opening of a corridor. In fact, already in 2021 Aliyev warned that this passage would open "whether the Armenians want it or not."
Azerbaijan's proposed route "would forcibly impose on Armenia an extraterritorial corridor, a corridor that would pass through the territory of Armenia but would be outside our control... it is unacceptable to us and it should be unacceptable to the international community," he said. Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan at the United Nations General Assembly last week.
During Soviet times, Nakhchivan was connected to Azerbaijan by road and rail, but those links fell into disuse when Azerbaijan and Armenia went to war in the 1990s over Nagorno-Karabakh, although air links remained.
Armenia has a defense pact with Russia to protect it against attacks, although relations with the Kremlin have been tense since Pashinian came to power after the 2018 protests. The Yerevan government has accused Moscow, whose priority is now the war in Urania, for not supporting him in last week's fighting.
For its part, the Kremlin has responded that the only person responsible for Azerbaijan's victory is Prime Minister Pashinyan for his insistence on flirting with the West instead of working with Moscow and Baku for peace.
Despite claims made by Erdogan after his visit to the area, Iran to date rejects the idea of the land corridor, which would risk isolating the Islamic Republic from vital trade routes to Russia, and has held military exercises near its border with Azerbaijan amid deteriorating relations with Aliyev.
Relations between Baku and Tehran deteriorated after the 2020 war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Armed with Israeli and Turkish drones, Azerbaijani forces regained control of large swaths of its territory occupied by Armenia since the early 1990s, before Russia brokered a ceasefire.
Turkey gains ground, at least while Moscow changes its plans, in the Russian 'backyard' of the Caucasus.
