Intrepid Report
Sept 30 2020
Category: 2020
Turkish Press: ‘Armenia’s withdrawal only solution to Karabakh issue’
Anadolu Agency, Turkey
Sept 29 2020
‘Armenia’s withdrawal only solution to Karabakh issue’
Burak Bir | 29.09.2020
ANKARA
The Upper Karabakh dispute can only be solved with the withdrawal of Armenia from Azerbaijani territories, Turkey’s foreign minister said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a news conference in Ankara along with Khazar Ibrahim, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Turkey, Mevlut Cavusoglu reiterated Turkey’s full support for Azerbaijan.
“We, as Turkey, always stand with our brotherly country Azerbaijan, just as they always side with Turkey,” he said, adding that Ankara is determined to completely resolve the dispute.
Cavusoglu stressed that Turkey will continue to extend all-out diplomatic support to Azerbaijan in line with the ‘one nation, two states’ concept that defines Ankara and Baku’s close relations.
Referring to international organizations’ stance on the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, Turkey’s top diplomat criticized parties, including the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), for not taking any concrete steps to solve the problem.
Cavusoglu asserted that Turkey and its current government has made concerted efforts to resolve the issue in a peaceful and diplomatic way.
Deadly border clashes broke out early Sunday when Armenian forces targeted Azerbaijani civilian settlements and military positions, leading to multiple casualties.
Azerbaijan’s parliament declared a state of war in some cities and areas, following Armenia’s border violations and attacks in the occupied region.
Azerbaijan declared partial military mobilization on the second day of the clashes.
Upper Karabakh conflict
Relations between the two former Soviet nations have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Upper Karabakh, or Nagorno-Karabakh, an internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan.
Four UN Security Council and two UN General Assembly resolutions, as well as many international organizations, demand the withdrawal of the occupying forces.
The OSCE Minsk Group – co-chaired by France, Russia and the US – was formed in 1992 to find a peaceful solution to the conflict, but to no avail. A cease-fire, however, was agreed upon in 1994.
France, Russia, and NATO, among others, have urged an immediate halt to clashes in the occupied region.
Turkish Press: Azerbaijan death toll rises to 12 in Armenia attacks
Anadolu Agency, Turkey
Sept 29 2020
Azerbaijan death toll rises to 12 in Armenia attacks
Ruslan Rehimov | 29.09.2020
BAKU
The death toll from the Armenian attacks on Azerbaijani civilian settlements since Sunday rose to 12, Azerbaijani officials said on Tuesday.
Azerbaijani prosecutors said in a statement that one more civilian were killed in the attacks of Armenian forces.
The statement also said two more Azerbaijani civilians were injured in the attacks on civilian settlements in different regions, raising the tally to 35.
At least 65 residences and five public buildings were destroyed in Armenia’s attacks between Sept. 27-29, said the office of the chief prosecutor.
Border clashes broke out early Sunday when Armenian forces targeted Azerbaijani civilian settlements and military positions, leading to casualties. Azerbaijan’s parliament declared a state of war in some of its cities and regions following Armenia’s border violations and attacks in the occupied Upper Karabakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, region.
On Monday, Azerbaijan declared partial military mobilization amid the clashes.
Upper Karabakh conflict
Relations between the two former Soviet nations have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Upper Karabakh, an internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan.
Four UN Security Council and two UN General Assembly resolutions, as well as many international organizations, demand the withdrawal of the occupying forces.
The OSCE Minsk Group — co-chaired by France, Russia and the US — was formed in 1992 to find a peaceful solution to the conflict, but to no avail. A cease-fire, however, was agreed upon in 1994.
France, Russia and NATO, among others, have urged an immediate halt to clashes in the occupied region.
Pompeo Says Violence Must Stop in Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict
US NEWS
Sept 29 2020
ATHENS (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged Armenia and Azerbaijan on Tuesday to cease hostilities as clashes continued over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Nagorno-Karabakh is inside Azerbaijan but is run by ethnic Armenians and is supported by Armenia. It broke away from Azerbaijan in a war in the 1990s, but is not recognised by any country as an independent republic.
Pompeo said during a visit to Crete that he had discussed the clashes in talks earlier with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias.
“The foreign minister and I addressed the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh where both sides need to stop the violence and work with the Minsk Group co-chairs and return to substantive negotiations as quickly as possible,” he said.
The Minsk group was set up by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in the early 1990s to encourage a resolution to the conflict. It is co-chaired by France, Russia and the United States.
France also wants Minsk Group talks.
“We will trigger in the coming days a co-ordination of the Minsk Group to clear up what happened, who is responsible and find a way out,” an official at President Emmanuel Macron’s office said on Tuesday.
The clashes between Armenian and Azeri forces over Nagorno-Karabakh have increased concern about stability in the South Caucasus region, a corridor for pipelines carrying oil and gas to world markets.
Both sides accuse each other of using heavy artillery in this week’s clashes in which dozens of people had been killed and hundreds wounded.
(Reporting By Michele Kambas, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
Nagorno-Karabakh: A Flare-Up, or All-Out War?
The Moscow Times
Sept 29 2020
The current flare-up that broke out over the weekend between Azerbaijan and Armenia in their long-running territorial dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh goes far beyond the usual skirmishes. There are reports of helicopters being shot down, the use of drones, and missile strikes.
There has not been such a violent escalation of the conflict there since April 2016. Suffice to say that Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the self-proclaimed republic of Nagorno-Karabakh — internationally recognized as Azerbaijan’s territory but controlled by Armenian separatists — have all declared martial law, which they did not do four years ago. Nor did Stepanakert, the biggest city in Nagorno-Karabakh, come under fire back then.
At the same time, current events can hardly be described as coming out of the blue. After the flare-up in July, which unusually took place not at the line of contact but on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, there was a lingering feeling that the armed standoff had simply been put on hold.
The “Karabakh pendulum” — when military escalation swings back to rounds of negotiations—seems to have become stuck this time. Unlike the four-day war in April 2016, when the pendulum returned to the field of diplomacy on the fifth day, that didn’t happen this summer.
There were, of course, efforts to minimize the risk of armed unrest on the border, primarily by Russian diplomacy. Contact was activated via both Foreign Ministry and Defense Ministry channels. Russia’s efforts had the backing of the West, and both sides in the conflict saw Moscow’s mediation as a largely positive aspect.
Yet negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan did not resume, even at a symbolic level, and the excuse given of the new coronavirus pandemic wasn’t very convincing: it didn’t prevent other foreign meetings by representatives of the two countries at the same time.
There are other nuances to the current drastic escalation, too, including increased Turkish involvement. Soon after the July border clashes, Turkish and Azerbaijani troops held joint exercises. Representatives of Ankara started speaking out about the ineffectiveness of the peace process, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking earlier this month at the 75th UN General Assembly, described Armenia as the biggest obstacle to long-term peace in the South Caucasus.
This is not to say that the new escalation was provoked by Turkey, but it undeniably contributed to Azerbaijan’s tougher position amid the stalled talks.
Another important factor is changes to Baku’s diplomatic lineup. Elmar Mammadyarov, Azerbaijan’s long-serving foreign minister, retired during the July border clashes. His replacement is the former education minister, Jeyhun Bayramov, who does not have much diplomatic experience. Meanwhile, Hikmet Hajiyev, a foreign policy advisor to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, now has an expanded operational role.
But the issue is not so much the new appointments as Mammadyarov’s departure. For the last two years, he was the chief optimist over what concessions the new Armenian government might be prepared to make under Nikol Pashinyan. Ever since Armenia’s Velvet Revolution, which brought Pashinyan to power in 2018, Baku had nurtured hope that the new prime minister, who has no connections to Nagorno-Karabakh and who, on the contrary, had waged war on Armenia’s “Karabakh clan” (whether or not that clan really exists is another question), could find a new opening to resolve the long-running conflict.
To be fair, it wasn’t only Mammadyarov who held such hopes: they were shared by many influential experts and diplomats in the West. Even within Armenia, Pashinyan’s opponents tried to label him a traitor who had sold the country’s national interests in exchange for Western money.
In reality, however, the position of Armenia’s new prime minister on Nagorno-Karabakh was tougher than ever, as evidenced by his demands that representatives of the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh republic be directly involved in negotiations, not to mention his bold statement that “Karabakh is Armenia.”
These actions could not fail to reinforce the position of hawks in Baku. Following the July border clashes, Azerbaijan’s foreign policy line became tougher. After all, the status quo doesn’t suit Azerbaijan at all, since it makes the country feel like the losing side. Baku has never ruled out the use of force to try to solve the problem of its territorial integrity.
The current escalation is a direct consequence of freezing the negotiations process. There have never been such short intervals between major armed flare-ups in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. Even the four-day war of 2016 was preceded by a nearly four-month lull. Now there are two hotspots in the standoff: one on the border, 300 kilometers from the line of contact, and another in Nagorno-Karabakh itself.
There are several possible outcomes to the current situation. The most likely is a battle for small and not particularly important pockets of land, allowing for the symbolic declaration of a “victory,” and a more concrete PR victory at home. That strategy may look foolproof in theory, but in practice, raising the bar in a conflict makes it very difficult to stop as planned. The opponent may have an entirely different view of things, and then a new strand of the confrontation is inevitable.
Incidentally, it cannot be ruled out that the current escalation is part of preparations for negotiations, and is needed to shore up diplomatic positions and ramp up pressure on the opponent before resuming talks.
Whatever reasoning is behind the armed clashes, one thing is clear: the importance of military force in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process is growing with every day. The absence of talks is becoming critical. If the Karabakh pendulum isn’t repaired very soon and doesn’t swing over from the generals to the diplomats (even allowing for a possible swing back the other way afterwards), it may become irreparable. And then the prospects of yet another regional war breaking out once again will stop being a mere scenario described by experts.
This article was first published by the Carnegie Moscow Center.
Turkish Press: Iran denies transferring military equipment to Armenia
Anadolu Agency, Turkey
Sept 29 2020
Iran denies transferring military equipment to Armenia
29.09.2020
TEHRAN
Iran’s foreign ministry on Tuesday denied reports about transferring weapons and military equipment to Armenia.
Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said Iran is carefully examining the goods that pass through its borders.
“Iran will not allow any kind of weapon and ammunition transfer,” he told a press conference in Tehran.
The spokesman said that non-military goods were still crossing between Iran and neighboring countries as usual, adding that the trucks suspected of carrying weapons were transporting normal commercial products.
Violence flared up on the front line between Azerbaijan and Armenia on Sunday after Armenian forces attacked Azerbaijani civilian settlements and military positions.
Relations between the two former Soviet nations have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Upper Karabakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, an internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan.
Four UN Security Council and two UN General Assembly resolutions, as well as many international organizations, demand the withdrawal of the occupying forces.
Several countries, including France, Russia and NATO, have called for an immediate halt to clashes in the occupied region.
*Bassel Barakat contributed to this report from Ankara
Turkish Opinion: Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict: Why Armenia Needs To Pull-Out From Occupied-Regions Of Azerbaijan: OPED
Eurasian Times
Sept 29 2020
The Armenia-Azerbaijan Upper-Karabakh conflict was sparked with the open territorial claims of Armenians to Azerbaijan’s historical lands, as well as ethnic provocations in 1988. From 1987 to 1989, over 250,000 Azerbaijanis were expelled from their historical lands in Armenia, while 216 of them were brutally murdered and wounded
Armenian forces destroy more Azerbaijani military vehicles: video
AMN – Al-Masdar News
Sept 29 2020
BEIRUT, LEBANON (8:25 A.M.) – The Armenian media released more video footage from the ongoing conflict in the Karabkh region on Monday.
In one of the videos posted on YouTube, the Armenian forces can be seen destroying multiple military vehicles belonging to the Azerbaijani army in the Karabakh region.
As shown in the video below, the Armenian forces were able to score multiple direct hits on the Azerbaijani army’s positions near the front-lines in Karabakh.
Clashes between the Azerbaijani and Armenian forces broke out on Sunday, following accusations from both sides about violating the ceasefire on the border.
Since the start of these clashes, both sides have suffered several casualties, including many dead from direct firefights along the border.
Watch the videos at
Yerevan refutes Baku’s claims of military base destruction in Karabakh
TASS, Russia
Sept 29 2020
YEREVAN, September 29. /TASS/. Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry’s claims that a military base has been destroyed in Nagorno-Karabakh are baseless, Artsrun Hovhannisyan, spokesman of the Armenian Defense Ministry told journalists on Tuesday.
“The claims of destruction of an Armenian military base in the town of Martuni do not correspond to reality. This did not and could not have happened,” he stressed.
On September 27, Baku said that Armenia had shelled the Azerbaijani army’s positions and Yerevan, in turn, claimed that Azerbaijan’s Armed Forces had launched an offensive in the direction of Nagorno-Karabakh, shelling the populated localities, including the capital, Stepanakert. Both parties reported casualties, including among civilians. The Armenian authorities declared martial law and announced a mobilization. Azerbaijan also declared martial law across its entire territory and announced partial mobilization.
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the highland region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory that had been part of Azerbaijan before the Soviet Union break-up, but primarily populated by ethnic Armenians, broke out in February 1988 after the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region announced its withdrawal from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1992-1994, tensions boiled over and exploded into large-scale military action for control over the enclave and seven adjacent territories after Azerbaijan lost control of them. Talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement have been ongoing since 1992 under the OSCE Minsk Group, led by its three co-chairs – Russia, France and the United States.
Why Armenia and Azerbaijan are clashing over Nagorno-Karabakh
News Statesman, UK
Sept 29 2020
ighting has broken out between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces in the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a contentious flashpoint between the two South Caucasian countries, in what is now likely the most serious escalation in recent years. By Tuesday 29 September, 95 people had reportedly been killed, with clashes continuing into a third day.
Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but is populated by ethnic Armenians and has functioned as an Armenian-sponsored unrecognised state since the fall of the Soviet Union. Armenian forces and Azerbaijan fought a devastating war over the territory in the 1990s, which saw reports of massacres and ethnic cleansing committed by both sides. Sporadic clashes between the countries have broken out since then, most recently in July.
Azerbaijan claims the territory as an inalienable part of its sovereign territory, while Nagorno-Karabakh’s de facto government, known as the Republic of Artsakh, argues it is an independent state and aims for eventual political unification with Armenia. Occasional peace talks between the two sides have never resulted in much progress. Both countries are deeply sensitive towards public opinion on Nagorno-Karabakh, as a pro-war – and implicitly anti-government – 2016 demonstration in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, showed. Eurasianet reported that in the past two weeks, Baku appeared “to be laying the ground for a heavy offensive,” taking measures such as calling up reservists.
Azerbaijan’s leader, President Ilham Aliyev, addressed his nation at the start of the conflict. “Our cause is just and we will win,” he told Azerbaijanis, echoing speeches made by Joseph Stalin and Soviet General Vyacheslav Molotov’s speech at the onset of war with Germany in 1941. Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia’s prime minister, responded by affirming that Armenia “is the guarantor of the security and independence of Artsakh”. Both countries have announced military mobilisation and martial law has been declared in some parts of Azerbaijan as well as in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
The latest bout of fighting has the potential to draw in outside actors if it escalates further. Armenia is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, the Russian-led defence pact which mirrors Nato’s security architecture among several ex-Soviet states. Meanwhile, Nato member Turkey has offered strong support to Azerbaijan, with defence minister Hulusi Akar telling his Azerbaijani counterpart that: “Turkey will always stand by Azerbaijani Turks by all means.”
“Ankara’s staunch support for Azerbaijan suggests a more assertive role for Turkey in the conflict going forward – perhaps a consequence of its successful interventions in Syria and Libya,” said Peter Liakhov, a journalist with the Tbilisi-based outlet OC Media. The Guardian reported that Turkey has been recruiting Syrian rebels to fight for Azerbaijan, suggesting an internationalisation of a conflict which has until now mostly been confined to local actors.
Azerbaijani troops are much better equipped and trained, with the country spending around six times as much on defence as Armenia. However, the stark highlands of Nagorno-Karabakh mean that Armenian troops enjoy a topographical “defenders’ advantage” over Azerbaijani forces, in land that they know well, said Richard Giragosian, the head of the Regional Studies Center, a Yerevan think tank.
Russia’s role is expected to be crucial in mediating the conflict. The country maintains good relations with both Armenia and Azerbaijan and has called for an immediate ceasefire and talks.
The unresolved status quo in Nagorno-Karabakh allows Russia considerable political leverage over both parties to the conflict, to which Russia continues to sell arms. “Moscow is not keen on a major escalation by Azerbaijan, not least because of its sizeable 102nd military base in Armenia,” said Maximilian Hess, the head of political risk at AKE International, a consultancy agency.
Oil and gas from the energy-rich Caspian Sea also transit through the Caucasus region, making it of economic significance to western Europe and world markets.
The latest bout of fighting between the two longstanding rivals has the potential to escalate further without effective outside mediation. Yet with the first US presidential debate this week and the election in just a month, the US is distracted – the rest of the world with it – and the elusive peace process seems more remote than ever.