The recent Azerbaijani attack on Armenian positions in Nagorno-Karabakh could not have happened without the direct support and encouragement of Turkey. Ankara provided Baku with drones, aerial support, intelligence and thousands of “expendable” Syrian militants to use on the offensive.
While Russia called for an immediate halt of the hostilities, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan added fuel to the fire, stating that Azerbaijan should not stop its attack until it “liberates” the whole of Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenian forces.
Turkish president made this extreme statement despite knowing that if Azeri troops capture or come close to capturing any major cities of the Artsakh Republic, it will trigger a full scale war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
But why Turkey is pushing so hard for an outcome that will cause serious instability so close to its borders?
Despite Turkey’s proclaimed brotherhood with Azerbaijan that goes as far as for the leaders of both countries to describe Turkey-Azerbaijan relation as “one nation two states”, it doesn’t support the offensive for sentimental reasons or because Nagorno-Karabakh is an area of strategic importance.
Ankara uses Baku as a pawn in its antagonism against Moscow and it is trying to dismantle the fragile balance that Russia has achieved in the Caucasus region.
The goal of Turkey is to put heavy pressure on the Armenian side so it will make Russia to intervene against Azerbaijan, forcing Baku to turn towards the west. A scenario that Moscow wants to avoid at all costs. That’s why the Kremlin, at least in its public statements, has kept a neutral position calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.
Turkey is trying to prove to the US and the EU that it is the only country that can effectively counter Russian influence in Middle East, Caucasus and East Mediterranean. By doing so it hopes to secure western support for its main pursuits on the Kurdish issue, East Mediterranean, Aegean and Cyprus.
Ankara does exactly the same in Idlib where it is clings on an area of little if any strategic importance in order to create problems for the Russian backed Assad government, unnecessarily stretching on the Syrian civil war.
Azerbaijan is not an ally of Russia but its neutral stance offers Moscow assurance that at least in the Caucasus region and the Caspian Sea, there will be no antagonism from the west. Especially in the Caspian Sea there is no western presence at all.
It remains to be seen how hard Baku is willing to push, because it knows that as with Georgia and Ukraine, if it aligns itself with the west, Russia will directly support the complete secession of the “contested region”, in this case, of Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia can also create major obstacles for Azerbaijan’s ambitions for the exploration and exploitation of the hydrocarbons in the Caspian Sea.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has already caused serious headaches in Moscow, while has uplifted the status of Turkey on the eyes of the anti –Russian bloc in EU & USA.
It is telling that many member states in the recent EU summit rejected any kind of written commitment to impose sanctions on Turkey for its aggression in the East Mediterranean against Greece & Cyprus or for its exportation of terrorist elements to different regions.
Interestingly in the same summit, the EU decided to impose sanctions against Belarus.
