2020 – Page 315 – Armenian Directory & News

Armenians feel they are facing their fight alone

October 11, 2020March 12, 2026 Emil Lazarian

EurasiaNet.org

Oct 10 2020

Ani Mejlumyan Oct 10, 2020

Two weeks into their most momentous war in a generation, Armenians feel like they are fighting for their lives – and that they are doing it alone.

The international community has stayed relatively unengaged during the ongoing conflict with Azerbaijan, a fact that has frustrated Armenians – but also strengthened their sense of internal unity.

“Armenia is in a sense alone,” said Gayane Simonyan, a 29-year-old IT worker who has temporarily left her job to organize aid for refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh, whose ethnic Armenian residents have been subject to a punishing bombing campaign from Azerbaijan, forcing tens of thousands of them to flee to Armenia.

Simonyan noted that Russia, a treaty ally of Armenia, has largely been standing aside as the fighting raged, and that the United States is a NATO ally of Turkey, which has been heavily backing Azerbaijan.

“Armenians always have been alone in their fights, and that is what’s happening this time as well,” she told Eurasianet.

In his rhetoric, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has invoked the example of Sardarapat, the legendary 1918 battle in which greatly outmanned Armenian forces, on their own, fought back an advancing Ottoman Empire.

“This is our Sardarapat,” Pashinyan said in an October 3 televised address to the nation. “Their goal is not territory, their goal is to finish the Armenian genocide.”

The heavy Turkish involvement in the Azerbaijani offensive has brought up inevitable resonances with the 1915 genocide, in which the Ottoman Empire massacred or drove out nearly its entire population of ethnic Armenians.

The sense of threat from Turkey is such that Azerbaijan has receded to a secondary place in the Armenian discourse about the war.

“By getting involved in this conflict, Turkey has forced our hand, we will fight till the last drop of blood before we live under Turks,” said one Lebanese-born Armenian, who spoke to Eurasianet on condition of anonymity.

Immediately after fighting started on September 27 with a heavy Azerbaijani offensive, Armenian social media users began appealing to the international community for a strong reaction against Azerbaijan and its Turkish backers.

International soccer superstar Henrikh Mkhitaryan issued a call on Twitter for the leaders of the United States, France, and Russia to be more active in bringing an end to the fighting. “Our youth is dying on the front line,” he wrote. “I am calling on you to use your full power in halting this human tragedy.”

During the conflict Armenia has gotten much sympathetic coverage from the international media, and voices of support from politicians and other figures around the world. Armenians were cheered by a recent European Union parliament hearing on the conflict in which politician after politician stood up to support Armenia and criticize Azerbaijan and Turkey.

But little concrete has come of that moral support and as time has passed, many Armenians have come to lose hope in a strong international response. One popular hashtag, #DontBeBlind, speaks to Armenians’ sense that the world is not looking as closely as it should be.

Olympic champion wrestler Arthur Aleksanyan complained in an October 5 Instagram post about the inaction of the international community. “You have been silent about it while the children, mothers, and youth of Armenia are left alone with terrorists,” he wrote. “It is impossible to think anything but that THE WORLD HAS GONE BLIND FROM AZERI OIL AND PETRODOLLARS.”

One popular social media post going around among Armenians has quoted Martin Luther King, Jr.: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

As the international community stands aside, many Armenians are reaching into a well of national unity and solidarity. “We can’t put our hope in anyone,” said Hrant Svyatelski, a 41-year-old who was an intelligence officer in the war with Azerbaijan in the 1990s.

“Nobody is afraid of those terrorists,” he said, referring to Syrian mercenaries that Turkey is widely reported to have hired to help the Azerbaijani armed forces. “There are no better fighters that Karabakhtsis,” he told Eurasianet. “In the worst case this will turn into a guerrilla war because nobody will leave Karabakh. So many things happened that mean that we can’t forgive them and they can’t forgive us.”

The sense of existential threat has led some Armenians to consider radical moves if the war continues.

“Either we lose everything or win, there is no other choice,” said Arsen Galstyan, a 32-year-old IT worker. “Armenians could disappear, and we can’t accept that. So there is a big chance the entire country could turn into ASALA.”

ASALA, the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, was a terrorist group that operated in the 1970s and 80s, assassinating more than 30 Turkish diplomats around the world for that country’s refusal to acknowledge the genocide.

“I have full faith in the Armenian army, we have no choice but to win – the other option is to be ethnically cleansed” from Karabakh, said the Lebanese-born Armenian, who was discussing the war with some friends in a central Yerevan cafe. “But even if that starts to happen another ASALA will come, and this time every silent country that stood and watched as we were massacred will again live in fear.”

Another young woman interrupted with a grim joke: “If that happens, we’ll just bomb our own nuclear plant,” she said, referring to the Metsamor nuclear energy facility. “Why not? If we don’t get to live, no one else does either.”

For now, though, most Armenians see no room for such despair.

“People are confident and unified and we’re not expecting any military support at the moment, we just need support on the diplomatic front to block Turkey from involving more forces” in the conflict, said Vahan Khachatryan, a 29-year-old filmmaker who had just returned from Karabakh. “There is a feeling that only we have our backs, and that’s a great feeling.”

Ani Mejlumyan is a reporter based in Yerevan.

https://eurasianet.org/armenians-feel-they-are-facing-their-fight-alone?fbclid=IwAR2UNI3_MK0MoFiS1D2TO1kC260Isz5KBoOjGSkMo5nvQe0LIsXcSgF6110

Armenia and Azerbaijan Are at War. Does President Trump Even Know?

October 11, 2020March 12, 2026 Karakhanian Suren

Intelligencer

Oct 10 2020

By Jonah Shepp

On September 27, fresh fighting broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. While each country accused the other of having shot first, the conflict quickly escalated into martial law and total mobilization on both sides. Since then, military clashes as well as artillery and missile strikes on cities have killed more than 360 people, and the war has threatened to escalate into an even more destructive regional conflagration. A tenuous ceasefire is now in place, but appears to be failing as both sides claim the other is violating it.

The impending election, the resurgence of the coronavirus, and President Donald Trump’s own COVID-19 infection have sucked Americans’ attention away from anything else in the world that might be worth paying attention to, so you’d be forgiven for not realizing that a distant war has been going on for the past two weeks. The lack of attention and involvement from the U.S., however, may be contributing to the conflict’s rapid escalation and diminishing the prospects for its speedy resolution. Although it will have no impact whatsoever on our presidential election, it’s the sort of international crisis in which the U.S. president can make a real difference.

The mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan under international law, but most of its inhabitants are ethnic Armenians. The territorial dispute originated in the waning days of World War I when the Caucasian nations briefly set up their own independent nation-states amid the collapse of the Russian Empire, before being absorbed into the Soviet Union a few years later. The Soviets redrew the borders of the peripheral republics in the Caucasus and Central Asia to ensure that they contained significant ethnic-minority populations, making them more likely to fight each other than to fight Russia and harder to govern as independent states. Whether these decisions were part of a deliberate divide-and-rule strategy or more nuanced remains the subject of scholarly debate, but in any case, the strategy worked.

The Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh continued to press for independence from Azerbaijan throughout the Soviet period. In 1988, as the Soviet Union was beginning to fall apart, the leaders of the regional soviet voted to separate the region from Azerbaijan and unite it with Armenia. This attempt at secession launched an ethnic conflict that quickly spiraled into an all-out war, which lasted six years and led to at least 25,000-30,000 deaths and the displacement of 1 million people. Russia brokered a ceasefire between its former imperial possessions in 1994, by which time Armenia had taken control over Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjoining territories of Azerbaijan.

That ceasefire held, despite occasional violations, for 22 years, but the countries never reached a permanent settlement of the dispute, making Nagorno-Karabakh one of the several “frozen conflicts” of the post-Soviet era. A mini-war broke out in 2016, with Azerbaijan recapturing a small amount of territory over four days, and small-scale hostilities erupted this past July, presaging the larger war that broke out in late September.

An unexploded rocket in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region’s main city of Stepanakert on October 6 during the ongoing fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region. Photo: Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images

A complicating factor in this conflict is that the belligerents’ more powerful neighbors, Russia and Turkey, have interests in the South Caucasus and have the ability to either deescalate or exacerbate the conflict. Turkey, which sees the Turkic-language-speaking Azerbaijanis as part of a greater Turkish sphere of influence, has backed Azerbaijan in this dispute since 1993, when Ankara closed its borders with Armenia and imposed an economic blockade that remains in place today. Bad historical blood between Armenia and Turkey, which still refuses to acknowledge the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide, also contributes to present-day enmity between these countries. Russia, meanwhile, has always been the primary broker responsible for managing this conflict. It has a formal military alliance with Armenia, but does not consider Azerbaijan an enemy — and it is also the primary arms dealer to all sides in this conflict.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has tacitly supported military action by Azerbaijan, and the Turkish government has sent around 1,500 Syrian fighters to Azerbaijan to participate in the war, leveraging its proxy army of Syrian opposition militias, which it has also sent to fight in the Libyan civil war. Further illustrating the conflict’s expansive regional dimension, Turkey’s deployment of Syrian fighters has alarmed Iran, Azerbaijan’s other more powerful neighbor, which backs the Syrian government in that country’s civil war. Iran has good relations with both its Caucasian neighbors, particularly Azerbaijan, with which it has historical, cultural, and religious ties: Iranian Azerbaijanis are the largest ethnic minority in Iran, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is half-Azerbaijani on his father’s side. Tehran doesn’t want Turkish-backed mercenaries, whom it considers terrorists, on its borders, nor does it want Azerbaijan to fall too deeply under Turkish influence.

Russia has not stepped in militarily yet, but experts fear that Moscow could intervene on Armenia’s behalf if the fighting drags on, turning the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict into a direct or proxy war between Russia and Turkey, a NATO member state. Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan and Russian president Vladimir Putin have both said Moscow would uphold its commitment to Armenia as a military ally, but Putin has sought to position himself as a neutral mediator and broker another ceasefire. However, some experts believe Putin would like to see Pashinyan diminished or overthrown, as the Armenian leader is more pro-Western than his predecessors and not inclined to run his country as a Russian puppet state. Putin may seek to pressure Pashinyan into a more pro-Moscow position by withholding direct military assistance when Armenia needs it most.

The Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Minsk Group, a committee co-chaired by Russia, the U.S., and France, has been responsible for mediating this conflict since 1992. Russia has led the latest effort to bring the parties to the negotiating table. Overnight talks in Moscow led to a Russian-brokered humanitarian ceasefire that went into effect midday Saturday, but Armenia and Azerbaijan both accused each other of violating it within hours. Negotiations are reportedly still ongoing over the terms of a more durable ceasefire, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said, and the countries have agreed to renew peace talks under the auspices of the Minsk Group.

One member of that international mediation committee has been conspicuously absent from this effort. U.S. representatives have been involved in the Moscow effort to broker a ceasefire, but the highest levels of U.S. leadership have largely backed off. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo only commented on the conflict after being asked about it last week, and his comments made it clear that the U.S. wasn’t going to get involved: “We’re discouraging internationalization of this. We think outsiders ought to stay out. We’re urging a ceasefire. We want them both to back up. We’ve spoken to the leadership in each of the two countries, asking them to do just that.”

In past administrations, a shooting war involving Russia and a NATO member would be a drop-everything event for the State Department. President Donald Trump, who is friendly with Erdogan, could try calling his Turkish counterpart and persuade him to stop escalating the conflict. But of course, the president is too busy trying to rescue his spiraling reelection campaign and persuade the American people that he is not debilitatingly ill with COVID-19. Anyway, resolving a conflict between two countries most Americans can’t find on a map would not win him any votes next month, so why should he care?

As multiple commentators have pointed out, the absence of U.S. global leadership invites conflicts like these to flare up and makes them harder to resolve peacefully. We have seen bad actors take advantage of the Trump administration’s hands-off, “America first” approach to foreign policy over the past three years, and it is unsurprising to see a small country like Azerbaijan looking to settle a border dispute militarily while the U.S. is still governed by a president with no interest in diplomatic leadership. Under a putative Joe Biden administration, they must realize, they will be much less likely to get away with it.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/10/armenia-and-azerbaijan-are-at-war-does-trump-even-know.html?utm_source=fb&fbclid=IwAR25PDSwEfkbXf6XSqvhD_AE3YoQRPtDqYwYsMGjwxXEn1-gDFWf64j1Q-g

Azerbaijan’s assault against Armenia threatens Democracy everywhere

October 11, 2020March 12, 2026 Manouk Vasilian

The Hill, DC
Oct 10 2020

BY CHRISTOS A. MAKRIDIS AND ALEX GALITSKY, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS — 10/10/20 03:00 PM EDT

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

On September 27, Azerbaijan began a coordinated full-scale aerial and missile attack on Artsakh, Armenia. Turkey has played an especially active role by not only supporting, but also driving much of Azerbaijan’s aggression. It has provided its proxy with foreign mercenaries and the full extent of its military arsenal, including its F-16s . In fact, shortly after the assault on Artsakh began, Turkish President Recep Erdogan announced his full support for Azerbaijan and called for the overthrow of the Armenian government. These tactics are not new: Erdogan has employed them countless times, from its intervention in Libya to its dispute with Greece in the Mediterranean.

Unfortunately, some actors in the international community have dismissed Azerbaijan as the aggressor, calling both sides to “prepare populations for peace.” But if Armenia was never in search for war in first place, what more do they have to prepare for?

In contrast, Azerbaijan has been preparing its population for war over the past two decades — institutionalizing anti-Armenian sentiment, stockpiling military assets purchased from Turkey and Israel, and steadily sidelining efforts for a negotiated solution to the conflict. In fact, Azerbaijan recently disavowed the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group peace process when President Ilham Aliyev called the Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh) mediation efforts “pointless” and threatening to resolve the issue militarily. What’s happening now shouldn’t come as a surprise to the international community — Azerbaijan telegraphed it all along.

Azerbaijan and Turkey have been working strategically to influence international public opinion, especially the United States, Israel and Europe. Azerbaijan’s nefarious foreign dealings were recently exposed by an Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) investigation into the “Azerbaijani laundromat,” an extensive money laundering operation that saw Azerbaijan funnel over $2.9 billion dollars between 2012 and 2014 alone into foreign shell corporations to buy favor among international institutions, politicians, lobbyists and journalists. UNESCO and the European Parliament were extensively targeted, and recent reports have surfaced from Israel of the transfer of a significant amount of funds from the state-owned Israeli Aerospace Industries to a laundromat-linked account after a $5 billion contract was signed between the two.

Azerbaijan’s public relations efforts have sought to obscure the international community’s awareness of the virulent state-sponsored anti-Armenian racism throughout Azerbaijani society that has resulted in the incitement of hate crimes, such as the destruction of cultural monuments and the granting of impunity to the perpetrators of hate crimes. Moreover, Azerbaijan and Turkey have repeatedly dismissed and denied the Armenian genocide, not only refusing to take accountability for the actions of their predecessors in perpetrating this crime against humanity, but going to the lengths of openly espousing the very ideologies that informed the genocide 105 years ago.

These actions have had international reverberations. For example, following Azerbaijan’s aggression against the Republic of Armenia in July, tens of thousands of Azerbaijani demonstrators chanted “death to Armenians” in the streets of Baku. That has spread to diaspora even in the United States, where in recent weeks, most notably in San Francisco, a series of attacks were waged against an Armenian church and elementary school.

Ironically, Azerbaijan has often touted itself as a leader in human rights and religious liberty. But according to measures of religious liberty from the Varieties of Democracy, Azerbaijan ranks within the 10^th percentile of countries across the world as of 2018 — far below the median. In contrast, Armenia ranks at roughly the unweighted mean across all countries in the data.

While religious liberty might seem like a luxury to some students of international relations, it is an important determinant of human flourishing. Using a sample of over 150 countries surveyed between 2006 and 2018, new research from one of the authors shows that religious liberty has a causal effect on human flourishing, particularly among religious minorities. Importantly, these results are present even after controlling for measures of economic freedom (e.g., property rights) from the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom and measures of economic activity (e.g., GDP).

The research suggests that religious liberty is a prerequisite for democratic governance, aiding the process for civic engagement and women empowerment and reducing the potential for public and political corruption. Not surprisingly, limiting the freedom to choose and arrive at even the most basic judgments about their identity stifles creativity and increases the potential for corruption by overly zealous and powerful bureaucrats. In this sense, until Azerbaijan recognizes the legitimate right to self-determination of the Armenian people free of threat of persecution for their religion, culture and ethnic identity, peace is going to be impossible.

Throughout the years, the chief failure of the OSCE Minsk Group – the entity mandated with finding a settlement to this conflict – and its three co-chairs – the United States, Russia and France – has been the refusal to directly attribute blame to Azerbaijan for its constant aggression and ceasefire. Despite efforts by the U.S to curtail Azerbaijan’s aggression during the 1991-94 war, and in recent years its advocacy for the implementation of the Royce-Engel peace protocols, successive administrations have continued to appease Azerbaijan, including the recent earmarking of $100 million in military assistance to the Caspian dictatorship earlier this year.

While Azerbaijan has positioned itself as a key strategic partner to the U.S. in the region, often cynically deploying its relationship with Israel as an example of its good-faith partnership, its close ties to an increasingly dictatorial and expansionist Turkey, as well as its oft-overlooked relationship with Iran and Russia, demonstrates that Azerbaijan is only out to serve its own interests, even if that means transferring millions of dollars into Russian and Iranian state-linked companies, or selling Iran a 10 percent stake in one of its major oil pipelines despite international sanctions regimes.

While Azerbaijan has attempted to shield itself from international scrutiny by riding on the presence of tense domestic politics in the United States and a global pandemic, we cannot ignore it any longer. The international community must recognize that failure to stand up for religious minorities anywhere is a threat to them everywhere. Inaction creates precedent and emboldens dictators.

Christos A. Makridis is an assistant research professor at Arizona State University, a non-resident fellow at Baylor University, and a senior adviser at Gallup. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @camakridis. Alex Galitsky is communications eirector of the Armenian National Committee of America – Western Region, the largest Armenian grassroots advocacy organization in the United States. Follow him on Twitter @algalitsky.

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/520437-azerbaijans-assault-against-armenia-threatens-democracy-everywhere?fbclid=IwAR117ufZn_gDEyLUEXAgj4O0D_cfDHWShqtE_gKZQTrbYojZ8I-Dj9RGYDY#.X4IYzw4ZWAw.facebook

Armenia hails new weapon in war with Azerbaijan: Kim Kardashian

October 11, 2020March 12, 2026 Talar Tumanian

The Telegraph, UK

Oct 10 2020

So big is Kim Kardashian’s online profile that her statements on Nagorno Karabakh have been viewed by millions

ByColin Freeman GYUMRI • 6:00pm

Samvel Balasayan does not look like the sort of man who spends much time Keeping Up With The Kardashians. As mayor of Armenia’s second-biggest city, Gyumri, he has enough on his plate as it is – and like most middle-aged men, he is not that fascinated by the day-to-day lives of LA reality TV stars.

Yet Mr Balasayan can boast one thing that most of Kim Kardashian’s 190 million social media fans can only dream of: he has actually met her. Gyumri is where her ancestors hail from, and when she returned to the city five years ago for an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, he was in the VIP greeting party.

“Gyumri has become well known through her programme,” beamed Mr Balasayan, who is keen to promote the city as a tourist destination. “We are delighted that Kim has us put on the world map.”

Right now, though, Ms Kardashian has turned her considerable publicity powers to a more pressing Armenian cause: the war against Azerbaijan over the disputed enclave of Nagorno Karabakh, which has claimed more than 300 lives since it broke out two weeks ago.

“Please share the news,” she posted on her Instagram account. “We are praying for the brave men & women risking their lives to protect Artsakh (the local name for Nagorno Karabakh’s self-declared republic) & #Armenia.”

So big is Ms Kardashian’s online profile that her statements on Nagorno Karabakh may have been viewed as much, if not more, than those of Armenia’s elected leaders. But while many Kardashian followers may have only a passing interest in Nagorno Karabakh, there is another worldwide constituency for whom it could not be closer to the heart: the global Armenian diaspora.

Spread everywhere from Los Angeles to Lebanon, and with pockets too in France, Russia and west London, the diaspora is a legacy from World War One, when up to 1.5m Armenians died at the hands of Ottoman Turks.

Turkey denies Armenian claims that it was a genocide, saying the deaths occured during civil war, but there is no doubting the scale of the exodus. The diaspora is an estimated 11m strong – compared to just 3m in Armenia itself.

Since the flare up of the conflict with Azerbaijan, the exiles have been mobilising en masse – some staging demonstrations, some organising relief supplies, and some even volunteering for front line duty.

“Armenia is a small country always at the mercy of other empires, and we have only two allies: our army and our diaspora,” said Vartan Marashlyan, executive director of the Repat Armenia Organisation, a group based in the capital, Yerevan, which encourages diaspora engagement. “Whenever we have an existential issue, the entire nation becomes an army.”

The diaspora previously mobilised in major fashion in 1988, helping Gyumri after an earthquake that killed some at least 25,000.

With the diaspora traditionally well-organised – some 30,000 Armenian community and church groups exist worldwide – the contribution to the latest war effort is substantial. Some £60m in donations has already reached the Hayastan All Armenian Fund, a national charity.

Meanwhile, thousands have come back to the homeland to help, from LA-based doctors and trauma psychologists to Russian-Armenian business tycoons. Some offer expertise in IT or logistics – while others, like Allen Sayadyan, a 40-year-old LA estate agent, simply offer goodwill.

The Telegraph bumped into him last weekend in Nagorno Karabakh, where he and several friends had driven to donate medical supplies, cigarettes and water. At the time he was visiting the Holy Saviour Cathedral in the town of Shushi, which has since had its dome shelled by Azeri forces.

“I’m just here to help however I can really,” he said. “I’d fight if asked to, although to be honest I’ve never picked up a gun before.”

Another expat who has swung into action is IT project manager Haik Kazazian, 32, who moved back to Armenia two years ago from Montreal. When the war broke out, he put out a fundraising appeal on Facebook to friends in the Canadian diaspora, expecting no more than CDN $500 (£300). He has already received CDN $20,000 (£11,750).

“Nobody in Montreal is sleeping at night, everyone is as worried as they can be,” said Mr Kazarian, as he stood in a yard piled high with vegetables, toiletries ready to be sent in a van to families displaced by the fighting,

Like Mr Sayadyan, Mr Kazarian has no experience of military service, although he did offer his services at his local army HQ in Yerevan. However, with Armenia still full of combat veterans from the last war with Azerbaijan in the 1990s, and also running a national service program, he got the impression he wouldn’t be needed.

“My sense was that if things reached the point where they needed me to enlist, then the war effort really would be going badly,” he smiled. “Aid convoys are probably the best way I can help.”

In similar fashion, nobody is expecting Ms Kardashian to swap her raunchy outfits for designer military fatigues and head to the frontlines. But back in Gyumri, her backing of the cause has certainly raised morale among some of those trying to help.

“I’d like her phone number for sure,” joked Svoyan Sasun, 30, as he manned a city centre stall collecting food and clothes. “People criticise here, but when the nation is in its hour of need, everyone loves her.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/10/armenia-hails-new-weapon-war-azerbaijan-kim-kardashian/?fbclid=IwAR30wMQy686ZpzsF4fxh2_Y4XykUF45dL4DHreoVB4MJna2fJCtmdEACuVs

Russian weapons and proxy fights add to tensions in one of the world’s ‘most kinetic areas’

October 11, 2020March 12, 2026 Talar Tumanian

Business Insider

Oct 10 2020

Christopher Woody

Reports that Turkey activated a Russian-made air-defense system to track US-built fighter jets raised hackles in Washington, which is pressuring Ankara to get rid of the system.
The reports have also added to existing tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea region, where Turkey has a number of disputes with its neighbors, including its NATO allies.

A report this week that Turkey activated a Russian-made air-defense system to track Greek fighter jets raised US ire and added to tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, an increasingly troublesome region for NATO.

Greek outlet Ekathimerini.com reported Monday that Turkey activated radars on its S-400s to track Greece’s US-made F-16 fighter jets as they returned from a multinational exercise near Cyprus on August 27.

Turkey’s 2017 purchase of the S-400 has been a problem for the US from the start. Its delivery in July 2017 prompted the US to kick Ankara out of the F-35 program, citing concerns Russia could use the system to gather data on the jet.

Turkey’s tests of the S-400 with its own F-16s late last year were also seen as an implicit threat by some in Congress.

It remains unclear if Turkey actually did activate its S-400s to track the Greek jets, and Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Republican Sen. James Lankford want answers from the Trump administration.

“Reports of this activation make clear that Turkey has no intention of reversing course and divesting of this system,” the senators wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “Additionally, the slow pace at which the Department of Defense is moving to remove Turkey from the F-35 supply chain has no doubt emboldened [Turkish] President Erdogan.”

The senators said the reports added to concerns “about Russia’s ability to access sensitive data.” They asked Pompeo for more information about the August 27 incident as well as whether Turkey has integrated the S-400 with NATO’s Link 16 tactical data link and if that access facilitates Russian intelligence-gathering.

A State Department spokesperson said they were “aware of these reports” and “deeply concerned” about Turkey continuing work on the S-400.

Turkey’s suspension from the F-35 program “signaled the seriousness with which the administration approaches this issue,” the spokesperson said.

Southeastern Europe has become a troublesome front for NATO.

Russian activity there has been a major concern, prompting Adm. James Foggo, former head of US naval forces in Europe, to call the Eastern Mediterranean “one of the most kinetic areas in the world” in a June speech. But Turkey’s actions have made it a thorn in the side of its NATO allies.

Turkey has clashed with the US and its European neighbors over the war in Syria. The Libyan civil war has become a point of contention, as shown by a June incident in which Turkish warships escorting an arms shipment to Libya reportedly harassed a French frigate on a NATO patrol. (France has also taken a more aggressive approach to disputes in the Mediterranean.)

Tensions have risen between Turkey and Greece, historic foes and NATO members, over a longstanding territorial dispute in the Mediterranean, though NATO said this month that they had agreed on a mechanism “to reduce the risk of incidents and accidents in the Eastern Mediterranean.”

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan embraced that vision after a failed coup in 2016, scorned by what he saw as a lack of a strong response by other Western countries.

After that coup, Erdogan “dramatically reduced the independence” of the Turkish military, said Ben Hodges, who commanded the US Army in Europe between 2015 and 2017.

“Many officers who had longtime NATO or Western relationships, a lot of them are gone now,” Hodges told Insider. “You still have the same very professional, talented, competent Turkish military, but you can tell that they are extremely cautious about saying anything or doing anything that would be seen as not 100% in line with what would be expected from Ankara.”

Erdogan’s frustration with NATO allies over issues like the war in Syria as well as their reluctance to provide Ankara with other air-defense systems has been cited as motivation for the S-400 purchase.

During a discussion of the S-400 at a recent meeting that included retired Turkish military officers, Hodges said he was told that the purchase “was a decision made by the administration, not an institutional decision.”

“In other words, it was not the normal procurement process,” Hodges said.

In their letter, Van Hollen and Lankford noted that the Trump administration hasn’t sanctioned Turkey for the S-400 purchase under the Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act, which is meant to punish Russia for its interference in the 2016 election and has been used to sanction buyers of Russian arms.

The US continues “to stress at the highest levels” that the S-400 is “a major obstacle” in Turkey’s relations with the US and NATO and risks CAATSA sanctions, the State Department spokesperson said.

Van Hollen and Lankford also expressed concern about reports of an S-400 test planned next week in the Turkish city of Sinop, on the Black Sea, where US and NATO aircraft are very active. (Russia has S-400s in Crimea and its Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, both near where NATO aircraft are active.)

Self-proclaimed Artsakh says fighting continues in Karabakh’s Hadrut despite ceasefire

October 11, 2020March 12, 2026 Parkev Tvankchian

Dev Discourse, India

Oct 10 2020

ANI | Yerevan | Updated: 10-10-2020 21:18 IST | Created: 10-10-2020 21:18 IST

Yerevan [Armenia], October 10 (ANI/Sputnik): The Foreign Ministry of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh in the Nagorno-Karabakh region said on Saturday that the Azerbaijani forces carried on with military operations in the town of Hadrut in Karabakh despite the humanitarian ceasefire agreement, but other areas along the contract line are “relatively calm.” Following the 10-hour talks in the Russian capital of Moscow, Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to cease hostilities in the conflict-torn region starting noon (08:00 GMT). The ceasefire is intended to allow both sides to exchange captured individuals and bodies of those deceased. However, the parties soon accused each other of violating the truce.

“Prior to reaching the ceasefire agreement for humanitarian reasons, the Azerbaijani side attempted to carry out reconnaissance operation in the direction of Hadrut. Despite the fact that it was only about three hours into the ceasefire, operations to blockade and destroy the infiltrated [Azerbaijani] group continue. It is relatively calm at the other sectors of the contact line,” the Foreign Ministry said. The large-scale hostilities in the Armenian-majority breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh erupted on September 27 when both parties accused each other of violating the ceasefire.

Most countries, including Russia and France, have called on the warring parties to cease fire and settle their differences via dialogue. Turkey has vowed to support Azerbaijan with all the needed means. (ANI/Sputnik)

https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/international/1246576-self-proclaimed-artsakh-says-fighting-continues-in-karabakhs-hadrut-despite-ceasefire

Turkey says the Armenian-Azeri ceasefire “cannot replace a lasting solution”

October 11, 2020March 12, 2026 Aram Torosian

Greek City Times

Oct 10 2020

by PAUL ANTONOPOULOS

Turkey on Saturday hailed the Azerbaijan-Armenia humanitarian truce as an “important first step”, but was quick to add that such measures “but cannot replace a lasting solution.”

In a statement, the Turkish Foreign Ministry also reaffirmed that “Turkey will continue to stand by brotherly Azerbaijan on the ground and at the table”

“The ceasefire which was declared on humanitarian grounds for the exchange of prisoners of war and bodies, is an important first step, but cannot replace a lasting solution,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“Since the beginning, Turkey has always underlined that it would only support those solutions which were acceptable to Azerbaijan. With this understanding, Turkey will continue to stand by brotherly Azerbaijan on the ground and at the table,” the statement continued.

The Turkish Foreign Minister claimed that “during the armed conflicts that started on 27 September 2020, Azerbaijan has shown Armenia and the whole world that it has the ability and the self confidence to reclaim its territories under occupation for nearly 30 years.”

“In this process, calls for ceasefire were made from all over the world with humanitarian considerations. Consequently Azerbaijan gave Armenia a last opportunity to withdraw from the territories it has occupied,” the statement added.

It is noted that the Turkish Foreign Minister and its Azerbaijani counterpart discussed by telephone a tripartite meeting between Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia on Saturday, according to Turkish diplomatic sources.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov discussed the tripartite meeting between the foreign ministers of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia in Moscow on Friday, citing sources, who asked not to be named. Çavuşoğlu voiced Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan’s decisions at the tripartite meeting.

Russian President Vladimir Putin summoned the Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia to Moscow on Friday for consultations mediated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and the parties decided to suspend the ceasefire on humanitarian grounds.

However, just minutes after the ceasefire was meant to begin, Azerbaijan broke it by attacking various positions, particularly against the town of Hadrut that it falsely claimed it had captured yesterday but was exposed to be a lie.

Armenia and Azerbaijan Say Russia-Brokered Cease-Fire Truce Fails to Hold

October 11, 2020March 12, 2026 Tambiyan Samvel

TIME Magazine

Oct 10 2020

BY VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV / AP

OCTOBER 10, 2020 11:33 AM EDT

MOSCOW — Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to a Russia-brokered cease-fire in Nagorno-Karabakh starting Saturday, but immediately accused each other of derailing the deal intended to end the worst outbreak of hostilities in the separatist region in more than a quarter-century.

The two sides traded blame for breaking the truce that took effect at noon (0800 GMT) with new attacks, and Azerbaijan’s top diplomat said the truce never entered force.

The cease-fire announcement came overnight after 10 hours of talks in Moscow sponsored by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The deal stipulated that the cease-fire should pave the way for talks on settling the conflict.

If the truce holds, it would mark a major diplomatic coup for Russia, which has a security pact with Armenia but also cultivated warm ties with Azerbaijan. But the agreement was immediately challenged by mutual claims of violations.

Minutes after the truce took force, the Armenian military accused Azerbaijan of shelling the area near the town of Kapan in southeastern Armenia, killing one civilian. Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry rejected the Armenian accusations as a “provocation.”

The Azerbaijani military, in turn, accused Armenia of striking the Terter and Agdam regions of Azerbaijan with missiles and then attempting to launch offensives in the Agdere-Terter and the Fizuli-Jabrail areas. Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov charged that “conditions for implementing the humanitarian cease-fire are currently missing” amid the continuing Armenian shelling.

Armenia’s Defense Ministry denied any truce violations by the Armenian forces.

The latest outburst of fighting between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces began Sept. 27 and left hundreds of people dead in the biggest escalation of the decades-old conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh since a separatist war there ended in 1994. The region lies in Azerbaijan but has been under control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia.

Since the start of the latest fighting, Armenia said it was open to a cease-fire, while Azerbaijan insisted that it should be conditional on the Armenian forces’ withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh, arguing that the failure of international efforts to negotiate a political settlement left it no other choice but to resort to force.

The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan signed the truce in Moscow after Russian President Vladimir Putin had brokered it in a series of calls with President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.

Russia has co-sponsored peace talks on Nagorno-Karabakh together with the United States and France as co-chairs of the so-called Minsk Group, which is working under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. They haven’t produced any deal, leaving Azerbaijan increasingly exasperated.

Speaking in an address to the nation Friday hours before the cease-fire deal was reached, Aliyev insisted on Azerbaijan’s right to reclaim its territory by force after nearly three decades of international talks that “haven’t yielded an inch of progress.”

His aide, Hikmat Hajiyev, said that the Minsk Group must offer a concrete plan for the Armenian forces’ withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh. “There will be no peace in the South Caucasus until the Armenian troops pull out from the occupied territories,” he said.

Fighting with heavy artillery, warplanes and drones has engulfed Nagorno-Karabakh, with both sides accusing each other of targeting residential areas and civilian infrastructure.

According to the Nagorno-Karabakh military, 404 of its servicemen have been killed since Sept. 27. Azerbaijan hasn’t provided details on its military losses. Scores of civilians on both sides also have been killed.

The current escalation marked the first time that Azerbaijan’s ally Turkey took a high profile in the conflict, offering strong political support. Over the past few years, Turkey provided Azerbaijan with state-of-the-art weapons, including drones and rocket systems that helped the Azerbaijani military outgun the Nagorno-Karabakh separatist forces in the latest fighting.

Armenian officials say Turkey is involved in the conflict and is sending Syrian mercenaries to fight on Azerbaijan’s side. Turkey has denied deploying combatants to the region, but a Syrian war monitor and three Syria-based opposition activists have confirmed that Turkey has sent hundreds of Syrian opposition fighters to fight in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Turkey’s involvement in the conflict raised painful memories in Armenia, where an estimated 1.5 million died in massacres, deportations and forced marches that began in 1915. The event is widely viewed by historians as genocide, but Turkey denies that.

Turkey’s highly visible role in the confrontation worried Russia, which has a military base in Armenia. Russia and Armenia are linked by a security treaty obliging Moscow to offer support to its ally if it comes under aggression.

But at the same time, Russia has sought to maintain strong economic and political ties with oil-rich Azerbaijan and ward off Turkey’s attempt to increase its influence in the South Caucasus without ruining its delicate relations with Ankara.

Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have negotiated a series of deals to coordinate their conflicting interests in Syria and Libya and expanded their economic ties. Last year, NATO member Turkey took the delivery of the Russian S-400 air defense missiles, a move that angered Washington.

https://time.com/5898960/armenia-azerbaijan-russia-cease-fire-fails/?fbclid=IwAR1PwZ6znUWcRVkWkRQ6cKvTsxMRCWz7yHIAN6thH15aaIosdILDvfD7koI

Op-ed: Azerbaijan is waging a war not just against Armenia, but the entire civilized world

October 11, 2020March 12, 2026 Jalatian Sonya

Orlando Weekly

Oct 10 2020

In 1915, the state of Florida’s various publications provided journalistic due diligence in reporting news that drew attention to humanitarian assistance and inhumane atrocities. Florida was an integral supporter of Near East Relief (NER), the American-led campaign that quickly sparked an international response with its unprecedented humanitarian endeavor, mobilizing all segments of American citizenry including elected officials, celebrities and laypersons alike, to help rescue victims of the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey from 1915-1930. Through several publications and pleas for assistance to the American nation, the state of Florida requested prayer days for the dying as it rallied to raise critical funds to sustain NER’s invaluable efforts to rescue and rehabilitate millions of refugees and orphans.

As a descendant of Armenian ancestors, more than 100 years after the Armenian Genocide, this is my plea for history not to repeat itself. tweet this

As a descendant of Armenian ancestors, more than 100 years after the Armenian Genocide, I am finding myself in an unimaginable reality that was merely described to me by my parents and grandparents. I am waking up to images of children hiding in bunkers with terror in their eyes, messages from family in my homeland describing sounds of missiles landing and feeling inundated by the mission of ethnic cleansing as the end goal of Azerbaijan’s and Turkey’s aggression. This is my plea for history not to repeat itself.

Armenians are being targeted and attacked once again. We are reliving 1915.

On Sept. 27, Azerbaijan violated International Humanitarian Law, once again breaking the 1994 U.N. Ceasefire Agreement, launching a full scale, premeditated attack on the Republic of Artsakh a.k.a. Nagorno-Karabakh using heavy artillery and aerial warfare. Turkey is providing military and political support to Azerbaijan while recruiting, funding, and transporting Islamic fundamentalist mercenaries from neighboring countries.

The Azerbaijani offensive is an attempt by Ilham Aliyev to stabilize his government by diverting attention away from domestic problems heightened by the economic decline caused by COVID-19 and a drop in oil prices. Despite international pressure for a cessation of hostilities, Azerbaijani forces have also launched direct attacks on the internationally recognized borders of the Republic of Armenia, targeting military and civilian infrastructure. Azerbaijani armed forces are targeting civilians with large-caliber weapons, mercilessly killing women and children. By deliberately targeting civilians and civilian objects, by using indiscriminate and prohibited methods and means of warfare, Azerbaijan has violated the rules of International Humanitarian Law.

Azerbaijan’s infamous advocate and genocidal big brother, Turkey is actively involved in the escalation of this conflict. Turkey, under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogon is leading a proxy war to satisfy its imperial pan-Turkik aspiration and drive to dominate yet another region. Azerbaijan and Turkey are threatening regional stability and peace. The outbreak of a full-scale war in the South Caucasus could have serious consequences, involving Russia, Georgia, and Iran, thus spilling beyond the borders of the region and threatening international security. This is not only a war waged against Armenia and Artsakh, but a war against the entire civilized world. Totalitarian Azerbaijan is a threat to democracy everywhere. Azerbaijan and Turkey are assaulting the freedom, liberty, democracy, and the right to self-determination of the Armenian people.

The situation in Armenia is critical and needs your attention. We, the Armenian diaspora, are asking for your help again as we did in 1915, to provide coverage of these atrocities and shine light at what could be the next genocide. Despite a week of intense fighting, and the use of banned weapons, there has been little to no media coverage.

I urge you to contact your Senators and Congressmen to call attention to this growing trend of fascism from regimes responsible for war crimes and human rights violations. You can visit anca.org/alert if you’d like to learn more about these war crimes.

Arpine Dokuzyan is a member of the Armenian National Committee of America – Western Region.

Erdoğan edging towards crossing Putin in Nagorno-Karabakh

October 11, 2020March 12, 2026 Eduard Nalbandian

AHVAL News

Oct 10 2020

Ahval
Oct 10 2020 09:43 Gmt+3
Last Updated On: Oct 10 2020 10:37 Gmt+3

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is on the verge of crossing Russia’s red line as the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is different from Syria and Libya, Kerim Has, a Moscow-based Russian and Turkish affairs analyst told Ahval in a podcast.

On Oct. 1, Andrey Kortunov, director-general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a think-tank affiliated with the Russia’s Foreign Ministry, said the relationship between Erdoğan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was a minefield, and the Turkish president might have crossed the line and was close to stepping on a mine with its involvement in Nagorno-Karabakh.

“Although the red line has not been crossed yet, Erdoğan is poking Putin’s nerve endings,” Has said.

The relationship between the two leaders was already strained before fighting broke out around Nagorno-Karabakh on Sep. 27, he said.

Russia and Turkey have managed to establish a relationship that is mutually beneficial but also fraught with complications in the Syrian and Libyan civil wars, where the two support opposing sides. They are strategic partners and competitors at the same time, even direct opponents in some cases.

However, Nagorno-Karabakh has a distinct significance for Russia, the analyst said. The two countries have had either military advisers, mercenaries or troops deployed on in Syria and Libya, but similar Turkish efforts in Nagorno-Karabakh, a former Soviet stomping ground in close proximity to Russia, could lead to unintentional escalation and permanent destruction of the partnership, he added.

“Putin will not allow more Turkish interference in Karabakh, which is known as Russia’s backyard,” Has said.

Russia enjoys good relations with both sides in the conflict: it has a defence pact with Armenia, its traditional ally, and recently fostered warmer ties with Azerbaijan. Moscow also sells arms to both countries.

Turkey, on its part, has not hid its support for Azerbaijan as they share long-standing cultural, historic and economic ties. Ankara provided military support to the Azeri government for the fighting that broke out with Armenian separatists on Sept. 27.

Armenia, Russia, France and Iran all accused Turkey of deploying Syrian fighters to Azerbaijan. The Russian Foreign Ministry said last week that it was “deeply concerned” by the deployment of Syrian and Libyan militiamen to the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, reported around 900 Syrian mercenaries were transported to Azerbaijan by private Turkish security companies since the clashes started. Members of the Syrian National Army, a group of Turkey-backed opposition militias in northern Syria, told Foreign Policy that such transfers happened even before the fighting. Both Turkey and Azerbaijan deny such reports.

Turkey instrumentalised foreign mercenaries to exert influence on several fronts, Has said. “Putin comes within an inch of publicly announcing that jihadists were sent to Nagorno-Karabakh through Turkey.”

Putin is reserving his true feelings of resentment over Turkey’s intervention as part of a strategy to punish Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his government that resists returning into Russia’s sphere of influence, the analyst said.

One of Pashinyan’s pre-election promises when he came to power following a series of anti-government protests that unseated a Moscow-friendly administration was to reduce Armenia’s reliance on Russia.

The Russian president has been successfully using Armenia’s phobia of Turkey in his gambit to restore control over the country, Has said.

“The reckoning of the Pashinyan administration with Russian and pro-Russian names and flirting with the West caused Moscow to view the threat of Baku (the Azeri government) from a favourable perspective.”

Has said Erdoğan’s recent move to test its Russian-made S-400 missile systems should be seen as an effort to calm relations with Putin.

On Tuesday, Turkey began moving its Russian S-400 missile defence systems to a training ground near western province of Sinop for testing.

“The unveiling of S-400s in Sinop is again based on political calculations. Although it is not activated at the moment, it will be activated sooner or later,” he said.

Tensions between NATO allies Turkey and the United States over the S-400 air defence systems appeared to come to a head in April when Erdoğan and his government announced plans to activate them.

However, the costly activation has been delayed for the foreseeable future, with Turkish authorities citing technical issues and the coronavirus pandemic.

Washington has threatened Ankara with sanctions and suspended Turkey from the programme to build and operate the fifth generation F-35 fighter jet last year after Turkey bought the S-400s, which the United States maintains are not compatible with NATO defence systems and threaten the F-35’s stealth capabilities.

https://ahvalnews.com/nagorno-karabakh/erdogan-edging-towards-crossing-putin-nagorno-karabakh-kerim-has-russia-analyst?amp&fbclid=IwAR27mPWtFvQDz8FosaaVqVfeHEnzQow0yVa0Q_YQjzhIWjPw0RvbNdySXj4