Turkey 'Spreads Instability' by Backing Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh

Syria isn’t the only place where the Turkish government keeps putting spokes into others’ wheels. This time Ankara is working to destabilize relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan by supporting Baku’s aggressive policies in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan said.

According to Kocharyan, Turkey supports Azerbaijan and wants a military conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia

The Turkish government supports Azerbaijan and is interested in maintaining the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, seeking to destabilize the nearby countries.

"It's too bad that for Turkey human lives are determined by their ethnic identity. Such racist actions from Turkey encourage the continuation of the aggressive action against the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic," Kocharyan said, according to RIA Novosti.

The deputy foreign minister of Armenia said the actions of Turkey fit into the policies of its current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who seeks to "spread the waves of instability, terrorism and bloodshed" both in Turkey and in neighboring countries.

In the past, government sources in Azerbaijan revealed joint defense initiatives were signed between Ankara and Baku, such the TurAz Qartali program, aimed at establishing military partnerships in the event of aggression from a third party. As for Azerbaijan, a third party aggressor could only mean Armenia, Italy's Il Giornale reported.

Furthermore, one should keep in mind the close ethno-cultural ties which exist between Turkey and Azerbaijan.

At the same time, Ankara's relations with Yerevan have always been strained as a result of Turkey's refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire. Back in 1993, Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 over its support for Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Meanwhile Armenia has been getting closer with Russia over the recent years. In late February, Moscow gave Yerevan a preferential loan for the purchase of Russian military equipment worth $200 million. That really made Azerbaijan concerned and it even sent an official protest to Moscow over its actions.

Moreover, at the end of 2015, Russia signed an agreement with Armenia to create a joint missile air defense system in the South Caucasus. The US global intelligence company Stratfor said that the Russo-Armenian military agreement would upset Turkey's ambitions in the region.

On Saturday, Armenia and Azerbaijan had a sharp escalation of the situation in the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh area, with both sides accusing each other of violating the ceasefire that has been in place since 1994.

The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1988, when the Armenian-dominated autonomous region sought to secede from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, before proclaiming independence after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. In September 2015, the conflict escalated, with the sides blaming each other for violating the truce.