Within minutes of the noon ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan on 10 October, both sides accused each other of committing violations. The agreement to end hostilities had been negotiated in Moscow with Russia. Clashes that started on 27 September with armed forces of Azerbaijan fighting those of Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh (Mountainous Karabagh), escalated over the weekend of 3-4 October with towns and cities being shelled and hit by missiles. Before the ceasefire, at least 300 people were reported to have been killed and 70,000 displaced.
The Turkish state has encouraged Azerbaijan’s bellicosity. When the latest fighting started, the Minsk Group of France, Russia and the US, that in 1992-94 oversaw attempts to resolve the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh called for an immediate ceasefire. Turkish President Erdogan rejected any ceasefire saying, ‘Turkish people stand with their Azeri brothers with all our means. The time has come for the regional crisis that started with the occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh to be put to an end. Once Armenia leaves the territory it is occupying, the region will return to peace and harmony.’ In late September, Turkey transported mercenary forces drawn from the jihadis it employs in Syria to fight the Kurds to Azerbaijan. Turkey shares borders with Azerbaijan and Armenia. President Erdogan and Turkey’s AKP/MHP government’s neo-Ottoman ambitions threaten the entire Middle East, Caucasus and Mediterranean regions. Armenia’s President Armen Sarkissian called on Russia, NATO and the US to restrain Turkey, saying it was ‘the bully of the region’ and warned that Turkey was creating ‘another Syria in the Caucasus’. Sarkissian said Turkey’s approach ‘means ethnic cleansing… it reminds us of the genocide. This is a fight against genocide’. One of the last atrocities of the Ottoman Empire was the Armenian Genocide of 1915-23 when between one million and 1.5 million Armenians were killed. Turkey’s intervention revives Armenian fears.
Azerbaijan claims Nagorno-Karabakh constitutes about 20% of its territory and that it has been illegally occupied by separatist Armenians backed by neighbouring Armenia. Azerbaijan is Turkic-speaking and primarily Muslim, with over ten million people. Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, is the oil centre of the Caspian basin and hosts multinational corporations such as BP, ExxonMobil and Chevron. The Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline transports oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey and then onto southern Europe and Israel; its major owner is BP. Armenia is mainly Christian, with almost three million people. Nagorno-Karabakh lies close to the Armenian border, is historically Armenian by ethnicity and has approximately 150,000 people.
Locations of confirmed skirmishes marked with red squares.
Historically, the South Caucasus has had mobile and ethnically intermingled populations, wherein ethnicity is not easily identified with territory and any attempt to establish a state on the bases of ethnicity and territory risks enforcing racial oppression. With the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, Karabakh was occupied by British troops. By 1921 Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan were under Bolshevik control. The Soviet government decided that Nagorno-Karabakh should be incorporated in Soviet Azerbaijan rather than Soviet Armenia, but given the status of an autonomous oblast (administrative division) within Azerbaijan. No significant disputes over the borders followed. However, a petition for the reunification of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia was submitted by local residents to the Soviet sate in 1963. Ever since, Armenia has favoured reunification and Azerbaijan has opposed it. In 1968 there was fighting between Armenians and Azeris in Nagorno-Karabagh’s capital Stepanakert (Khankendi to Azerbaijan).
As the Soviet Union declined there were demonstrations in Nagorno-Karabakh for unification with Armenia. 80% of Nagorno-Karabakh’s electorate voted to join Armenia in 1988, but their request was rejected by the Soviet state. Demonstrations for unification took place in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia. On 27/28 February 1988 Azerbaijani attacks on Armenians in Sungait, north of Baku, resulted in 26 Armenians and six Azerbaijanis dead. Police did nothing to stop the killings, and the actual death toll could have been considerably higher. Since 1991 Nagorno-Karabakh has been internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but has been governed by the Republic of Artsakh as an autonomous region within Azerbaijan. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh became central to the nationalist movements of Armenia and Azerbaijan. Armed conflict ensued. At least 161 Azerbaijani civilians were killed by Armenian armed forces in Khojaly in Nagorno-Karabakh in 1992; Azerbaijan says 613 civilians were killed. Afghan mujahideen and fighters from Chechnya joined the Azerbaijan side. Russia supplied Armenia with heavy artillery and tanks. By 1994 Armenia possessed not only Nagorno-Karabakh but also adjacent territory. When the fighting stopped it is estimated that over 30,000 people had been killed.
Strategic significance
During the 1988 to 1994 conflict Azerbaijan imposed an economic and military blockade of landlocked Armenia. In September 1993 Azerbaijan tightened the blockade, causing a steep drop in Armenian living standards. Iran intervened by supplying Armenia and trade between the two countries greatly increased. The second largest ethnic group in Iran is Azeri and more Azeris live in Iran than in Azerbaijan. Iran’s ruling groups are very wary of the pan-Turkic posture of the government in Turkey and its neo-Ottoman ambitions. Azerbaijan and Armenia share borders with Iran; as part of their strategy against Iran, the US and Israel have provided weapons and military aid to Azerbaijan. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, from 2015 to 2019 ‘A total of 60% of Azerbaijan’s arms imports came from Israel and 31% from Russia.’ Israel has sent over $800m worth of defence assistance to Azerbaijan and the US over $120m in recent years. This October, Amnesty International condemned the use of illegal cluster weapons fired by Azerbaijan forces on Stepanakert; they were made in Israel. Hikmet Hajiyev, senior adviser to President Ilham Aliyev, said Azerbaijan’s people ‘very much appreciate the cooperation with Israel, especially the defence cooperation’. Israel gets 40% of its oil supplies from Azerbaijan.
On 8 October, the Financial Times reported that ‘Azerbaijan’s military has published slick footage of Turkish-made drones blitzing scores of Armenian positions, striking air defence systems, artillery units and tanks.’ It was not clear whether the drones were operated by Azerbaijan’s military or by their Turkish counterparts. Turkey has also supplied F-16 fighter jets, but again it is unclear whether the pilots are Azerbaijani or Turkish. Russia has a military base in Armenia and a mutual defence pact with the country, but it does not include Nagorno-Karabakh. Russian forces have confronted Turkey’s auxiliaries in Syria, drawn from jihadist groups, and supports the Libyan National Army confronting the Government of National Accord, which Turkey supports in Libya and to which it sent mercenaries drawn from Syria. Turkey’s Defence Minister Hulusi Akar claims a national affinity between Turkey and Azerbaijan justifies Turkey’s involvement in Azerbaijan’s conflicts: ‘Ties between Turkey and Azerbaijan are based on “two states one nation” principle. We are always together, on good days and bad. We are on the side of our Azeri brothers in defence of their homeland.’
The presence of jihadist groups in Azerbaijan will be viewed as a threat by the Russian government; the Chechen war (1999-2009) demonstrated the potential for instability in Russia’s predominantly Muslim republics. The shadow of the Crimean War (1853-56), when the Ottoman Empire together with Britain, France and Sardinia defeated Tsarist Russia still falls on the Kremlin. Russian forces intervened in Georgia in 2008 when Georgia’s government proposed joining NATO; Russian troops were stationed in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia incorporated Crimea and Sevastopol into the Russian Federation after the coup in Ukraine in 2014. NATO sought to advance on Russia’s southwestern flank and diminish Russian influence in the Black Sea and Central Asian regions. Russia’s rulers showed their intention to resist and reverse the US encroachment into the territories of the former Soviet Union, which they consider their sphere of influence.
The people of Nagorno-Karabakh should have the right to self-determination, but Azerbaijan and Turkey oppose this. Conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh shows us that tensions are building and are ready to explode into outright war. The ongoing wars in Syria, Iraq and Libya, the antagonisms in the Persian Gulf and threat to Iran, the disputes in the eastern Mediterranean between Turkey and Greece and Cyprus, are all ready to escalate as the major imperialist powers jostle for position and local states seek for their own advantage. The wars of yesteryear are returning – new ones are about to start.
Trevor Rayne
