The president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, held talks yesterday with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which he hinted at the possibility of creating a land corridor between the two countries through Armenia, which opposes the idea.
Erdogan flew to the Azeri autonomous enclave of Nakhchivan, a strip of territory located between Armenia, Iran and Turkey that Ankara and Baku want to link with the rest of Azerbaijan by creating a land corridor that would run through southern Armenia.
Aliyev threatened in 2021 to create such a corridor, which would create a contiguous land bridge between both allies and deprive Armenia of a land border with Iran, “whether it likes it or not.”
The symbolic location of the meeting, which took place days after Azeri forces broke into Nagorno-Karabakh to regain control of the separatist region with an Armenian majority, increases the tension of the Armenian authorities, who in the past have rejected that corridor. despite opening up to reestablishing the severed land connections.
At a joint press conference in which neither man took questions, President Aliyev expressed regret that Soviet authorities had considered part of what he said should have been territory belonging to the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan as land belonging to the Soviet Republic of Armenia.
“The land connection between most of Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan was thus cut,” Aliyev complained.
The latest events in the region take place at a time when Russia, with military installations in Armenia and a defense pact with Yerevan, is embroiled in the war in Ukraine and distanced from the current Prime Minister of Armenia, whom it considers too pro-Western and interested in maintaining and cultivating ties with Baku and Ankara.
Erdogan told the UN General Assembly last week that there was “a historic opportunity to build peace” in the South Caucasus region. “Armenia is not taking full advantage of this historic opportunity,” he lamented.
“We hope for a comprehensive peace agreement between the two countries as soon as possible and that promises are quickly fulfilled, especially on the opening of the Zangezur corridor,” he said, referring to the ceasefire agreement negotiated by Russia in 2020 that ended to a 44-day war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and which sought to unblock connections between Western Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan, a clause that Baku and Yerevan have since interpreted differently.
