Defense: the stakes of the territorial conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh
Audio 02:29
Stepanakert, capital of Nagorno-Karabakh suffered new strikes on October 4, 2020. RFI / ANISSA EL JABRI / BERTRAND HAECKLER
By: Franck Alexandre
6 min
For a week now, fighting has resumed between Azerbaijan and Armenia for control of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Deadly fighting, both sides claiming to have inflicted hundreds of losses on the opponent.
While on the international scene, calls for a truce multiply, Turkey, Baku's ally, is blowing on the embers of a conflict frozen for 26 years.
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It is a tiny territory, no bigger than a French department, a natural border between Turkish-speaking Azerbaijan and Christian Armenia.
For three decades, it has mainly been a front line.
Nagorno-Karabakh, populated by Armenians having seceded from Baku, has turned into a network of trenches at an altitude of over 1,000 meters.
Gaïdz Minassian, teacher-researcher at Science Po Paris: “
It's really 14-18… It's really the trenches, barbed wire, dogs, tins that act as a lookout
.
Armenia has two advantages
:
First, an almost impassable position in the mountains, when you are backed by a sovereign state, it is very difficult to dislodge someone who is in the middle of mounting;
and the second advantage, the soldiers.
That is to say that, when you are in a logic of survival, well you fight to the end.
And Karabakh for the Armenians, to give you an idea, it's Sparta
”
But in this old land dispute, the situation has recently changed.
Neighboring Turkey is blowing on the embers, supporting the offensive launched by Baku.
F16 fighters, drones and several hundred Syrian mercenaries were reportedly deployed by Ankara, to fight alongside the Azerbaijani army.
For Gaïdz Minassian, there is a global, global stake in this Caucasian affair at present.
“
This involvement is in fact part of Turkey's desire to expand beyond its borders.
We see it with Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cyprus, and now the Caucasus, and even perhaps also the Balkans ... So, this former Ottoman belt - since they are former Ottoman provinces -, Erdogan, taken in a nationalist, Islamist and neo-Ottoman impulse wants to find a sort of zone of influence.
And the tongue that hinders this desire to unify the Turkish-speaking world is Armenia.
However, neither the Russians, nor the Iranians, nor the Chinese, nor the Arabs, nor the Europeans, nor the Americans, want to promote Pan-Turkism.
So there is a global, global stake in this Caucasian affair at the moment,
”analyzes Gaïdz Minassian
.
“Why is China close to Armenia? Because of the Panturos Uighur problem. Why is Iran, in this Caucasian affair, rather close to Armenia? Because of the panturque threat? Why is Russia wary of pan-Turkishism? Because it goes against his interests in the region. The Europeans are the same, because there is the Balkans on the other side, and the Americans for a question of order. The Americans before Trump
”, underlines the researcher.
France, the United States and Russia on Thursday called for an immediate cessation of hostilities, with Vladimir Putin criticizing Turkey's aggressive interference because the Kremlin, Armenia's main military ally, also maintains close ties. relations with Baku and has no interest in a further conflagration of the Caucasus.
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Defense
Azerbaijan
Armenia
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