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Category: 2022

Azerbaijani press: Paradoxical West-Russia solidarity over Karabakh in light of Ukraine agenda

Chmshkian Vicken
15:48 (UTC+04:00)
823

By Vafa Ismayilova

The most recent picture of current global and regional developments raises some questions. For instance, what brings together in the South Caucasus those who have now become adversaries as a result of the similar situation in Ukraine?

Those concerned about Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea in Ukraine, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, once turned a blind eye to the Armenian occupation of Azerbaijan’s Karabakh and surrounding regions and urged Baku to reconcile with the then reality.

Azerbaijani troops on sovereign territories

In his recent letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, President Ilham Aliyev said that Azerbaijan is a state pursuing independent policies based on the will and interests of its people.

“The liberation of Azerbaijan’s historical lands ended almost 30 years of Armenia’s military aggression against Azerbaijan, as our country itself implemented the relevant UN Security Council resolutions that had remained on paper for almost 30 years. As an adherent of peace, we are ready to launch negotiations on a peace treaty with Armenia based on fundamental principles of international law, such as the territorial integrity, sovereignty and inviolability of the internationally recognized borders of our country. We do hope that the United States will support Azerbaijan’s peace agenda based on a vision for the future,” he said.

Azerbaijan continues its efforts to clarify the location of its positions and deployment points in the Karabakh region. The November 2020 ceasefire agreement signed by Baku, Yerevan, and Moscow, as well as the four UN resolutions adopted in the early 1990s, demand all Armenian armed forces to leave Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territories. And this has not been fully completed.

A few days ago, in response to senior U.S. official Jalina Porter’s recent statement of “concern” over the movement of Azerbaijani troops on the territory of Karabakh, Baku stressed that the United States, as the co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group has not taken any effective steps to end the military aggression of Armenia against Azerbaijan, which has lasted nearly for 30 years.

“Azerbaijan has restored its territorial integrity on the basis of international law and ensured the implementation of UN Security Council resolutions on its own.  Currently, the administrative-territorial unit called ‘Nagorno-Karabakh’ does not exist, but there are Karabakh and Eastern Zangazur economic regions, which are part of Azerbaijan. It is irresponsible for a U.S. State Department official to make such a statement on the basis of fake Armenian propaganda. We would like to emphasize once again that the Republic of Azerbaijan is on its sovereign territories,” the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry recalled.

Double standards versus justice

It should be noted that other OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing countries, Russia and France, had a similar reaction. It should be emphasized that applying double standards to Azerbaijan, which is in the same boat with Ukraine is an answer to the above question. However, pursuing double standards while addressing problems of similar nature is incompatible with restoring global justice.

In a post on his official Twitter account, Azerbaijani Consul-General to Los Angeles Nasimi Aghayev shared a similar position.

“Selective application of international law by great powers, especially that of the principles of territorial integrity and inviolability of borders, has brought nothing but instability, wars and bloodshed, practically destroying post-WWII rule-based world order. Time to rectify,” the diplomat stressed.

Azerbaijani ambassador to the United States Khazar Ibrahim also underlined this “hypocrisy”.

“Hypocrisy at work. The statements by the [U.S.] State Department and the [Russian] Defence Ministry are almost identical regarding Azerbaijan these days. Apparently, one needs to be a secular and tolerant majority Muslim country with independent policies based on international law to unite the U.S. and Russia,” he tweeted.

Meanwhile, Turkish media reported that Armenia had handed over combat aircraft to Russia for anti-Ukraine operations. On March 25, four Su-30 fighters are said to have taken off from Armenia and flown to Russia to be used against Ukraine.

As it turns out, Armenia became a party to the conflict in Ukraine, and once again, Armenia contributed to the conflict’s escalation rather than regional peace.

We wonder how the United States and other Western countries will respond to Armenia’s move, after previously pledging serious consequences for countries providing any military, economic, or other assistance to Russia. Will Armenia also face sanctions?

Gas hysteria

The recent accident on the illegally laid gas pipeline from Armenia to Azerbaijan’s Karabakh triggered yet another “glass storm” in the Armenian media. A true hysteria erupted in the neighboring country, and as expected, the ramifications spread to other countries thanks to the efforts of Armenian lobbyists.

The uproar over suspended gas supplies morphed into yet another issue that appears to unite Russia, the United States, and France.

Former Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Tofiq Zulfugarov touched on the topic in his Facebook post.

“So, what can I say about the topic of gas in Khankandi? It appears that this is the only topic today on which the Russian Federation, the United States, and France all agree… As a result, their conflict in Ukraine is not our concern.

On humanitarian issues, we stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine, but we remain neutral on the question of pro-Russian or pro-Western orientation… We have one pro-Azerbaijani stance!

P.S. Is Russian gas delivered illegally from Armenia to Azerbaijani territory exempt from sanctions?” Zulfugarov wrote.

“Humanitarian catastrophe”

It’s strange that “humanitarian catastrophe” is the term most frequently used by Armenian politicians over the abovementioned issue. A country, which has held one million refugees hostage to its expansionist ambitions, suddenly remembers for the first time in 30 years, the humanitarian side of the problem. The country that polluted rivers (particularly Oxchuchay and others) with mining waste, destroyed forests, burned dry pastures in the summer, and contaminated vast areas with mine and chemical industry waste, remembered the humanitarian factor.

It is interesting where were that time the international “lawyers” of Armenian separatists, who use the word “humanitarian” today?

Why were their voices not heard at the time? So many deputies voted against the well-known PACE resolution on the Sarsang reservoir. Ultimately, despite the efforts of the Azerbaijani delegation, those who voted against it today are the most vocal about “humanitarian catastrophe”.

It should be noted that accidents happen everywhere, including Azerbaijan and countries where Armenian lobbyists are active today. Emergencies must be handled calmly and without excessive hysteria. However, the Armenian reality, in keeping with its policy, attempts to blame Azerbaijan for everything that has occurred in this situation.

As earlier Baku stated Yerevan deliberately uses as an instrument for political manipulation of this technical problem.

“Armenia kept Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan with a population of more than 400,000 people in a gas blockade for many years, for 30 years used the Sarsang Reservoir as a tool for environmental terror against the population of Azerbaijan, for a long time denied the existence of maps of minefields, continues to hide information about the fate of about 4,000 Azerbaijanis who went missing in the early 1990s. Now Armenia is making similar unfounded accusations against Azerbaijan, which is political hypocrisy,” the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said.

Support from other Western countries

In the meantime, independent political expert Elkhan Shahinoglu believes that Azerbaijan can get support from other Western countries over Karabakh.

“We are concerned that the U.S. and France have taken the same stance as the Kremlin on the Karabakh issue while imposing harsh sanctions on Russia over Ukraine. This contradictory solidarity against us has deservedly elicited our outrage. But we won’t get anywhere if we keep complaining; we need to take action to break the co-chairs’ unity. The West as a whole is not pro-Armenian. Azerbaijan has close ties with the United Kingdom, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and a number of other Western countries, and various agreements have been signed. When Moscow, Washington, or Paris issue statements condemning us for the events in Karabakh, we can ask our Western allies to issue statements in our support. It is possible; you simply need to work at a lower level,” the expert said on his Facebook page.

Azerbaijani press: Azerbaijani Deputy FM completes working visit to Qatar

Hovhannisian John
18:23 (UTC+04:00)
561

By Trend

Deputy Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan Fariz Rzayev made a working visit to Qatar’s Doha from March 25 through , Trend reports citing the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry.

While in Qatar, Rzayev participated in a forum, where he spoke about the results of the 44-day second Karabakh war, the constructive position of Azerbaijan in the post-conflict period, de-mining and construction work carried out in the Azerbaijani liberated territories from Armenian occupation, the ministry noted.

In Qatar, Rzayev also met with State Minister for Foreign Affairs of this country, Soltan bin Saad Al-Muraikhi. Directions for the development of bilateral relations between the countries were discussed during the meeting.

Rzayev also visited a branch of Georgetown University in Doha, met with the leadership of the The Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University in Qatar. The directions of development of relations between the university and Azerbaijan were discussed at the meeting.

Turkish press: Kyrgyzstan extradites suspect in Armenian Turkish journo’s murder

Karakhanian Suren
 ISTANBUL MAR 27, 2022 – 4:49 PM GMT+3

A poster of Hrant Dink hangs on the facade of the building of Agos where he worked as editor-in-chief, in Istanbul, Turkey, Jan. 20, 2019. (DHA PHOTO)

Turkish police announced on Sunday that A.I., a fugitive suspect in the 2007 murder of Armenian Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, was brought to Turkey on Saturday after being detained in Kyrgyzstan.

A.I. was convicted in a trial over the shooting death of Dink in Istanbul and was sentenced to 12 years and six months in prison. He was accused of helping convicted murderer O.S. by hiding the weapon used in the murder and lending money to the murderer as well as his own cellphone.

Turkish counterterrorism police and police intelligence had discovered that A.I. was hiding in Bishkek and contacted Kyrgyz authorities. The suspect was caught by Kyrgyz security forces in February. When he was caught, he was carrying a passport belonging to his brother, with his own photo glued on the photo ID instead.

The police said the suspect was handed over to the authorities of Metris prison in Istanbul to serve his sentence.

A.I. was sentenced by an Istanbul court in 2012 on charges of “aiding and abetting premeditated murder.” His sentence was upheld by an appeals court in 2013. In another trial on Dink’s murder, he was sentenced to one year, 10 months and 15 days in prison for membership of a terrorist group in 2019, but it was discovered that he already fled abroad.

Dink was editor-in-chief of Agos newspaper when he was shot dead by teenager O.S. in broad daylight, a murder which stirred up a public outrage and triggered unprecedented protests. An outspoken critic, as well as supporter of a rapprochment between Turkey and Armenia, Dink was allegedly killed over his stance by the teenager who had identified himself as a nationalist.

O.S., who was captured as he was returning to his hometown in northern Turkey from Istanbul where he shot Dink dead outside the offices of Agos, was sentenced to 22 years and 10 months in prison, but the trial and investigation took another turn when a prosecutor, now wanted on charges of membership of Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ), said in his indictment that Ergenekon, “a terrorist group,” was behind the murder. Ergenekon was the name of a network of individuals described as a terrorist group by prosecutors, police chiefs and judges who orchestrated trials against them. Years later, it was discovered that Ergenekon was an organization concocted by FETÖ’s infiltrators in the judiciary and law enforcement to imprison people the terrorist group targeted using trumped-up charges and forged evidence.

Though O.S. was sentenced, the trial and a parallel investigation into his links continued for years, an unusually protracted period of time and ambiguity that is now blamed on FETÖ’s role in the investigation. When the terrorist group was designated as a security threat in late 2013 after two coup attempts and its infiltrators in the judiciary were suspended and detained, the course of the investigation changed yet again.

In 2014, a court paved the way for the indictment of public officials over their role in the murder. Former police chiefs, who were arrested for their FETÖ links, were also tried in this new case of Dink’s murder. A new indictment included FETÖ leader Fetullah Gülen, prosecutors and journalists linked to the terrorist group in the case. Prosecutors stated that the murder was the first violent act of FETÖ in its bid to seize power in Turkey. Gülen and others had apparently aimed to imprison their critics or those blocking their infiltration into law enforcement, judiciary and army by linking them to the murder, under the guise of the “Ergenekon” probes. Last year, six FETÖ-linked suspects, including former police chiefs, were sentenced for a coverup of the murder while a trial is underway for fugitive suspects including Fetullah Gülen.

EU concerned about renewed cuts of gas supply in Artsakh

Arsine Chaltikian

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 15:27, 23 March, 2022

YEREVAN, MARCH 23, ARMENPRESS. The European Union expressed its concerns about reports of a renewed disruption of the gas supply in Artsakh.

“The EU concerned about renewed cuts of gas supply to Stepanakert. It is urgently needed to resume supplies to affected local population. The EU calls on authorities in control to enable it, especially in the current harsh weather”, Peter Stano, lead spokesperson for the external affairs of  the EU, said on Twitter.

‘It makes me sick’: Armenian genocide victims wonder where money from settlement went

Maghakian Mike
March 24 2022
BY JUSTIN RAYSTAFF WRITER 

MARCH 24, 2022 5:30 AM PT

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Thursday, March 24. I’m Justin Ray.

When reporters Harriet Ryan and Matt Hamilton were investigating last year the influence that Los Angeles lawyer and “Real Housewives” figure Tom Girardi had at the State Bar of California, they came upon a tantalizing piece of information.

An agency investigator had sneaked into the bar’s headquarters on a weekend in 2015 and snapped photos of a confidential case file of a complaint against three L.A. attorneys for “moral turpitude,” according to a draft lawsuit by bar lawyers.

Their search to unmask the attorneys’ identities led them to a world far from the boozy lunches and glamorous parties of (now bankrupt) Girardi and his (now estranged) wife, Erika Jayne.

The case file concerned the Armenian genocide, the slaughter that claimed the lives of an estimated 1 million and scattered hundreds of thousands of refugees across the the globe.

A group of L.A. attorneys — all descendants of genocide survivors — mounted class-action lawsuits two decades ago to collect on life insurance policies for victims of the genocide. They came away with settlements totaling $37.5 million, but as a new Times investigation shows, the process of delivering money to Armenian families and charities did not go as planned.

To get to the bottom of what happened, the Los Angeles Times successfully petitioned a federal judge to unseal dozens of records in the case. Reporters sifted through several of the thousands of applications for settlement money that were stored at the library at Loyola Law School. (The haunting photos that illustrate the investigation are from the archived applications and photographed by our colleague Hamlet Nalbandyan.)

The investigation describes how the litigation that carried the hopes of the Armenian community devolved into a corrupted process marked by diverted funds and misconduct.

“It makes me sick,” a relative of one genocide victim said.

[Read the story: “A ‘blood money’ betrayal: How corruption spoiled reparations for Armenian genocide victims,” in the Los Angeles Times]

A Crime Against Humanity Was Allegedly Followed By a Crime Against the Families of the Victims

Emil Lazarian
March 24 2022

The Los Angeles Times documents a postscript to the Armenian Genocide.

 By Charles P. Pierce

Mar 24, 2022

BULENT KILICGETTY IMAGES

Not far from this very keyboard, in Watertown Square in Massachusetts, stands the Armenian Museum of America. Founded in 1971, in the midst of one of the largest Armenian communities in the country, the museum took the following as its mission:

The Armenian Museum of America is the largest Armenian Museum in the Diaspora. It has grown into a major repository for all forms of Armenian material culture that illustrate the creative endeavors of the Armenian people over the centuries. Today, the Museum’s collections hold more than 25,000 artifacts including 5,000 ancient and medieval Armenian coins, 1,000 stamps and maps, 3,000 textiles, and 180 Armenian inscribed rugs. In addition to more than 30,000 books in the Research Library, there is an extensive collection of Urartian and religious artifacts, ceramics, medieval illuminations, and various other objects. The collection includes historically significant objects, including five of the Armenian Bibles printed in Amsterdam in 1666.

But the Armenian Museum is more than just a storehouse of artifacts. It’s a living museum and library which offers exhibits and diverse cultural and literary programs to its members and the community at large.

In the museum, in addition to these artifacts, is a permanent exhibit on the Armenian Genocide, the systematic forced dislocation and murder of up to 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923, a policy so infamous that Adolf Hitler used it as a justification for his own crimes against humanity. The difference, which Hitler himself cited, was that, due to Turkish resistance, acknowledgement of the genocide’s reality was delayed for decades by Western nations that should’ve known better. For example, the United States recognized the Armenian Genocide three years ago this April.

Anyway, during the 2000s, a series of lawsuits, based in Los Angeles, seemed to achieve a kind of circumscribed justice for the descendants of the murdered Armenians. From the Los Angeles Times:

Then, in the mid-2000s, court cases in Los Angeles, home to one of the largest Armenian communities outside Armenia, delivered a measure of justice that history had long denied. Three Armenian American attorneys sued to collect life insurance policies on victims of the genocide, and came away with a pair of class-action settlements totaling $37.5 million. Finally, in an American courtroom, the genocide was treated as fact.

Of course, that being a whole lot of money, and this being the United States of America, the vultures were reportedly waiting.

In the decade that followed, however, the much hoped-for reparations devolved into a corrupted process marked by diverted funds and misconduct that even the lawyers involved characterized as fraud, The Times found in an investigation that drew on newly unsealed case filings, other court documents, official records, and interviews. More than $1.1 million in a settlement with a French insurer was directed at various points to sham claimants and bank accounts controlled by a Beverly Hills attorney with no official role in that case, according to court filings and financial records. A French foundation that was supposed to distribute millions in settlement funds to charity was never set up, and some $1 million of that money ended up at Loyola Law School, the alma mater of two attorneys in the case, according to an accounting provided by the school.

Uh-oh.

Armenians who stepped forward to collect on ancestors’ policies in the settlement with the French insurer had their claims rejected at an astonishing rate of 92%, court records show. Applicants were denied despite offering convincing evidence such as century-old insurance records, birth certificates, ship manifests, hand-drawn family trees and copies of heirloom Bibles. “It was for us blood money — blood of the people killed in the genocide,” said Samuel Shnorhokian, a retired French businessman who served on a court-approved settlement board and has tried for years to persuade the FBI and other agencies to investigate. “We never thought there would be misappropriation of funds.”

The history behind the lawsuits is a fascinating one. A California lawyer read in the memoir of a former U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire that, acting with complete impunity, the Turkish government demanded the payouts of American life-insurance policies held by the Armenians that the Turkish government had killed. For a while, the lawsuit strategy sailed along smoothly. Then everything went sideways.

It was in the second case that red flags emerged. That settlement, with Paris-based insurer AXA, designated up to $11.35 million for descendants. Decisions about whether applications were legitimate or not were to be made by a board of three prominent French Armenians, according to the settlement terms and court filings. Months before the French board’s appointment, the attorneys — Kabateck, Yeghiayan and Geragos — established important parts of the approval process in Los Angeles, according to court records and lawyers’ emails later turned over to authorities.

They installed as settlement administrator — the coordinator of the claims process — a courtroom interpreter from Glendale who had helped run the New York Life settlement. They instructed him to hire staff and set up operations in downtown L.A., in the same Wilshire Boulevard office used for the New York Life case. The arrangement put the process of deciding who got money 6,000 miles from Paris, making it difficult for the French board to provide any meaningful oversight.

This unwieldy arrangement resulted in new—and, in the minds of many of the plaintiffs, unreasonably restrictive—criteria by which to judge the claims made for the money.

The new criterion appears to have had a profound effect: Accountings in court records show that less than 8% of AXA claims applications were approved for payment. One result of the low approval rate was that millions of dollars in the settlement accounts could be used, per the wording of the settlement, for charitable purposes.

Those rejected on the city-of-residence basis included people who had provided what appeared to be overwhelming evidence that they were rightful heirs, according to archived files reviewed by The Times in recent months. Some who were denied had sent copies of their ancestors’ insurance policies — among the strongest possible proof that they had valid claims. The archived files suggest evaluators dismissed applications without reviewing the evidence, writing: “cities don’t match.”

The alleged actions of the administrators and the lawyers add one more violation to those already visited upon the families of the victims.

Another denied applicant wrote that he had sent 23 records to prove he was a descendant and had been counting on the money for heart surgery. “My paternal grandparents were beheaded at my father’s presence,” he wrote. “Honestly I’m so disappointed.”

Where the money reportedly went turned out to be another scandalous aspect of the whole affair.

Of the hundreds of Armenians approved for compensation from the AXA fund, a Syrian named Zaven Haleblian stood apart. He was awarded $574,425, more than any other individual, according to a settlement database later provided to authorities, court records and filings with the State Bar of California.

Yet as the French board soon learned, Haleblian had never heard of the AXA settlement, let alone applied for it.

With the files and bank records, the French board and Yeghiayan started working together to unravel where the money went in the AXA settlement. The Glendale lawyer tracked down Haleblian in Aleppo and arranged for him to be questioned under oath in the U.S. During a deposition, he expressed shock that checks had been issued in his name. He said he had never heard of the supposed ancestors — members of the Funduklian family — listed for him in the settlement database.

The story has an even more sprawling cast of characters, many of whom seem to have been drawn to a pot of money the way sharks are drawn to blood. The allegation is that a historic crime against humanity resulted in a historic crime against the descendants of the victims.

 

Ukraine war spurs Turkey-Armenia normalization

Bedik Zaminian
 eurasianet 
March 24 2022
Ayla Jean Yackley Mar 24, 2022
Armenia Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu meeting this month in Turkey. (photo: Turkish Foreign Ministry)

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has given fresh momentum to efforts by Turkey and Armenia to establish diplomatic relations, as the war is forcing countries in the region to recalibrate their foreign policy priorities.

Armenia Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan met his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on the sidelines of an international conference in southern Turkey on March 12, the highest-level meeting between the two countries in a dozen years.

That was two months after the neighbors appointed special envoys to discuss normalizing a relationship embittered by Armenia’s conflict with Turkish ally Azerbaijan and the century-old genocide of Armenians in Turkey during the Ottoman era.

“We will continue to work for the normalization of our bilateral relations without preconditions,” Mirzoyan told reporters at the forum in Antalya. Cavusoglu said: “We are working for stability and peace in the South Caucasus, and we see support for our efforts from all sides. Azerbaijan is especially pleased with the steps we are taking.”

It was the first meeting between Turkey and Armenia’s top diplomats since the collapse of a 2009 U.S.-brokered peace process. It represents a remarkable shift from 2020, when Turkey strongly supported Azerbaijan in the war against Armenia, supplying arms and mercenary soldiers. The war ended in an Azerbaijani victory, in which it regained much of the territory in and around Nagorno-Karabakh that it had lost in the first war between the two sides in the 1990s.

In contrast to 2009, when it opposed normalization, Azerbaijan this time supports the rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia. Separately, Cavusoglu said Mirzoyan told him Armenia “wants to begin peace agreement negotiations with Azerbaijan.” He added: “Even just beginning talks will be an important step.”

Since the 2020 ceasefire, sporadic violence still afflicts Nagorno-Karabakh, predominantly home to ethnic Armenians but internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, as well as the border between Armenia and Azerbaijani. But both Baku and Yerevan have indicated progress in recent weeks on preparations for negotiations on demarcating their border.

Russia’s incursion into Ukraine in late February has given new urgency to peace efforts between Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan, analysts have said.

The Ukraine conflict has made “Russia more likely to flex its muscle in the post-Soviet space and gives Moscow less incentive to greenlight these processes” between Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Asli Aydintasbas, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said at a March 14 briefing.

“Though never declared, they are pushing back against Russian influence in the area, with the understanding that normalizing relations and economic ties will make each other stronger in the Caucasus,” she said.

Already, 2,000 Russian peacekeepers are in Nagorno-Karabakh, a further expansion of Russia’s military footprint in the South Caucasus. Russia has long kept a military base in Armenia, which has largely stood by its closest ally during the Ukraine conflict, even as other former Soviet republics like Moldova and Georgia have been rattled by the specter of a revanchist Russia.

Moscow’s lack of robust support for Yerevan during the war over Nagorno-Karabakh has revealed the risks of overdependence, and the Ukraine conflict has led some to worry that “the existential threat to Armenia is now from Russia,” said Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center, a think tank in Yerevan. “In the event that Russia turns against normalization, [Armenia] wants to move even faster.”

Likewise, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev worries about Russia playing the role of spoiler in the region, said exiled Azerbaijani rights activist Emin Milli, chairman of the Restart Initiative. “The situation in Ukraine has opened up a fear of Russia in Azerbaijan, giving it extra incentive to support [talks] between Armenia and Turkey.”

For its part, NATO member Turkey has walked a diplomatic tightwire between Ukraine and Russia, selling combat drones to Kyiv but refusing to sanction Moscow. It argues that its good ties with both countries puts it in an ideal position to facilitate a political resolution of the conflict.

“Russia has diminishing returns in letting this process go forward [especially] if Turkey were to pivot more to the West and NATO,” Aydintasbas said.

Despite the key role it played in the 2020 war, Turkey found itself sidelined by Russia in the South Caucasus after the end of the fighting. Improving ties with Armenia represents “a chance to regain a seat at the table in regional trade and transport,” Giragosian said.

Cavusoglu’s meeting with Mirzoyan is part of a broader diplomatic offensive by Turkey as it seeks to repair relationships across its neighborhood, including with European Union countries, Israel, Egypt, the UAE and Greece. An aggressive foreign policy in recent years had left Ankara isolated and sanctioned by the EU and the U.S. Congress, but a severe economic slowdown has spurred President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to reach out to former foes.

For now, the talks between Turkey and Armenia are focused on accrediting ambassadors for each other’s countries, rather than re-opening embassies, and opening just two crossing points at the border for trucks and passengers, Giragosian said. More painful matters, especially reconciliation over the genocide of up to 1.5 million Armenians during World War I, remain a distant prospect. Turkey denies the massacres amounted to a genocide.

“If your ultimate goal is to open the border, you can do that. There must be an understanding from Ankara and Yerevan that this is a window of opportunity and they must move faster than they may be prepared,” Aydintasbas said.

 

Ayla Jean Yackley is a journalist based in Istanbul.

 

Karabakh Claims Azerbaijan Is Cutting Its Gas Supplies

Kajoyan Gevork
March 23 2022
By Eurasianet – Mar 23, 2022, 12:30 PM CDT

The de facto authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh have accused Azerbaijan of cutting natural gas supplies to the territory for the second time in as many weeks, depriving the people thereof heat for their homes amid a sharp cold spell.

Nagorno-Karabakh gets its gas supplied via Armenia, through a pipeline that transits territory over which Azerbaijan regained control in the 2020 war between the two sides.

Supplies from the pipeline were first disrupted on March 8, as tension spiked in the region following the launch of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Officials in Nagorno-Karabakh said that Azerbaijani troops prevented them from repairing the pipeline.

The shutdown forced residents of the territory to use other sources of heating, particularly electricity, which resulted in power outages. Armenian volunteers also shipped gas canisters to Karabakh to temporarily mitigate the issue.

The supply ultimately was restored on March 19, but was disrupted again on the evening of March 21. Officials in Nagorno-Karabakh blamed Azerbaijan.

“We have sufficient grounds to assume that during the gas pipeline repairs, the Azerbaijani side installed a valve that stopped the gas supply a few hours ago,” the de facto government said in a statement. “Unfavorable weather conditions serve the insidious Azerbaijani purpose of creating additional humanitarian problems for our population; it’s a crime.”   

There has been no comment from the Azerbaijani authorities. The Russian peacekeeping contingent in Karabakh is discussing the issue with the Azerbaijani side, a spokesperson for Karabakh’s de facto leader said on March 22.

March has been colder than usual this year, and heavy snow also has blocked roads in Karabakh and in the neighboring parts of Armenia, compounding the logistical complications.

The gas issue comes as the two sides have recently released more details on their slow negotiations over a peace deal.

Earlier this month Azerbaijan announced that it had sent a new proposal to Armenia to discuss a peace deal, which Armenia said it accepted on March 14. The deal would be based on five principles, according to Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry: “Mutual recognition of each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual reaffirmation of the absence of territorial claims to each other and a legally binding obligation not to make such claims in the future, abstaining from threatening each other’s security, demarcation of the border and unblocking of transport links.”

Following the Azerbaijani proposal Armenia said it had applied to the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe – the body that has been the main platform for negotiations since the first war between the two sides in the 1990s – to start negotiations.

But Armenia Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said Yerevan would also be insisting on the rights of ethnic Armenians in Karabakh to be respected. “It is paramount for the Armenian side that the rights and freedoms of the Armenians of Artsakh [an alternative Armenian name for the region] are guaranteed, and the status of Nagorno-Karabakh is finally clarified,” he said on March 15. “For us, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is not a territorial issue, but a matter of rights.”

With the new gas shutoff, however, many Armenians found the talk of peace ironic. “Despite the war in Ukraine, gas continues to flow through the country to Europe. And in our country, as the era of peace is beginning, the gas in Karabakh is cut off,” wrote journalist Nikolay Torosyan on Facebook. “Maybe we are doing something wrong, guys.”

By Eurasianet.org

 

Putin accused Azerbaijan of violating the ceasefire agreement in Nagorno-Karabakh by entering the zone controlled by the Russian mission

Markos Nalchajian
 HELEN HERNANDEZ

“Violating the provisions of a trilateral declaration of the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia of November 9, 2020, the Azerbaijani armed forces between March 24 and 25 entered the zone of responsibility of the Russian peacekeeping contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh and set up an observation post,” the Russian Defense Ministry denounced. it’s a statement. The statement added that Turkish-made drones were used to attack Karabakh troops near the village of Farukh, also known as Parukh.

Baku denied the accusations, saying it “regretted the unilateral statement by the Russian Defense Ministry, which does not reflect the truth,” adding that “Azerbaijan did not violate a single provision” of the ceasefire agreement.

Incidents between the armed forces of Azerbaijan and Armenia have been frequent in recent months, but Saturday’s announcement was the first time since the end of hostilities over Karabakh in November 2020 that Moscow has accused one of the parties of violating the uneasy ceasefire..

Moscow denounced the outbreak on the 31st day of the Russian military campaign in Ukraine, with signs that both sides were entrenching themselves for a protracted conflict in the pro-Western country. In this context, experts believe that Azerbaijan could be taking advantage of the weakness of the Russian troops due to the pressure in the invasion to venture into the area where the Russian mission is supposed to rule.

The Kremlin said on Saturday that President Vladimir Putin had discussed the situation with Armenian leader Nikol Pashinyan twice, last Friday and Thursday, and in an official statement urged Azerbaijan to withdraw troops. “An appeal has been sent to the Azerbaijani side to withdraw its troops,” the Defense Ministry said. “The command of the Russian peacekeeping contingent is taking steps to resolve the situation,” he added.

In 2020, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a war over the long-contested enclave, claiming more than 6,500 lives.. A Putin-brokered ceasefire agreement saw Yerevan cede swathes of territory and Russia will deploy a peacekeeping contingent in the mountainous region.

This Saturday, in addition, the Ministry of Defense of the split-off region stated in a statement that Azerbaijani drones had killed three people and injured 15 others.

“The Azerbaijani armed forces continue to remain in the village of Parukh,” the statement added. Armenia called on the international community to prevent attempts to “destabilize the situation in the South Caucasus.” “We also hope that the Russian peacekeeping contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh will take concrete and visible steps to resolve the situation and prevent further casualties and hostilities,” the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Yerevan claimed that the “invasion” of the strategically important Parukh “was preceded by constant shelling of Armenian settlements and civilian infrastructure.”

Archive image of Putin and the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Alíev, and the Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinián (EFE)

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia declared earlier this week that Azerbaijani troops entered the village of Parukh – controlled by Russian peacekeepers – on Thursday in what they considered “a clear violation of the ceasefire agreement”.

Armenia has also warned of a possible “humanitarian catastrophe” in Karabakh after gas supplies to the disputed region were cut off following repair works. Yerevan has accused Azerbaijan of deliberately starving the ethnic Armenian population of Karabakh of natural gas, an accusation that the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected as “baseless”.

Ethnic Armenian separatists from Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and the ensuing conflict claimed some 30,000 lives.

With information from AFP

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