Tag Archive for: Azerbaijan

As Russia’s Caucasus influence falls, filling the gap isn’t simple

Armenia’s intention to withdraw from a Russia-led security alliance of ex-Soviet states appears on the surface to offer an opportunity for the European Union, Turkey and Iran to expand their influence and pursue their own interests in the region.

However, their ability to fill the gap left by Russia’s declining role is restricted, as Azerbaijan, having won a war with Armenia in 2023, is keen to play by its own rules. So the three contenders for influence face limitations on their efforts.

The EU has been trying to take some of the heat out of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, mediating talks between them and hoping to cement its credentials as a geopolitical actor. Turkey wants to maintain its influence in its near region, and Iran can be assumed to want mainly economic benefits to alleviate the effect of international sanctions.

Armenia finally gave notice in June of its intention to leave the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), after freezing participation in February. Armenia did so partly because Russia had not supported it against military offensives in which Azerbaijan successfully reclaim the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Other factors were the ineffectiveness of Russian peacekeepers after the ceasefire and fellow CSTO-member Belarus’s sale of arms to Azerbaijan, revealed in leaked documents in June.

Conversely, Azerbaijan has become more assertive and felt less restrained by external pressure since its capture of Nagorno-Karabakh, its winning of new natural gas agreements and its gaining the honour of hosting the UN climate change conference in November this year, Azerbaijan sees no reason to give concessions to anybody. As long as Azerbaijan charts a more independent and combative course, the wider region should be wary.

The EU has been the main prospect in Armenia’s attempts to balance its foreign policy against Russian influence. Armenia has negotiated a comprehensive economic partnership agreement with the EU despite also being a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, the Russia-led would-be analogue of the EU. Suspicious of Russian peacekeepers, Armenia even requested that the EU deploy a monitoring mission to the Armenia-Azerbaijan border.

However, Armenia’s rejection of Russia as the region’s security guarantor does not automatically boost the EU’s capacity to promote security in the region. The EU’s monitoring mission is a temporary and limited measure and has been consistently undermined by Russia, which accuses the EU of peddling an enlargement and democratic reform agenda.

The EU’s credibility as a mediator is also threatened by Azerbaijan’s aggressive attempts to undermine France by fomenting unrest in New Caledonia and questioning the status of Mayotte. These are responses to what Azerbaijan sees as biased support for Armenia.

The EU faces a delicate balancing act as it tries to support Armenia against an increasingly assertive Azerbaijan, yet the EU itself cannot push too hard against Azerbaijan for concessions to Armenia as European countries are keen to import Azerbaijani natural gas as they reduce their dependence on Russian supply.

Then there’s Turkey, which the EU needs to consider because its pipelines carry the natural gas from Azerbaijan to Europe. As Russian influence weakens, Turkey may prefer not to support the EU as a competitor to its own ability to affect affairs in the region.

Turkey’s role in the region appeared most clearly in its military support to Azerbaijan. In particular, Turkish drones contributed to the Azerbaijani army’s edge over Armenian forces and facilitated the capture of Nagorno-Karabakh. Military support is probably a declining advantage however, since Azerbaijan has achieved its immediate objective of full control of Nagorno-Karabakh.

So Turkey’s influence in the region now relies on the alignment of political and economic objectives between Azerbaijan and Turkey. As the former becomes more assertive, Turkey’s influence can’t be taken for granted.

Iran has the most reason to be concerned by a weakened Russia. Among the countries that could gain regional influence as Russia loses it, Iran is the weakest. It lacks the EU’s economic weight and Turkey’s historical influence. Yet Iran needs stability across its border in the Caucasus as it seeks to overcome international isolation and is reliant on whichever economic corridors are available.

Indeed, Iran could see itself being undermined. An emboldened Azerbaijan could exert greater influence in the northern Iranian region that’s also called Azerbaijan and is home to an ethnic Azeri population. While Azerbaijan has not yet expressed a credible threat against Iran, Tehran is understandably concerned by this possibility.

The EU, Turkey and Iran are each pursuing its own interests in the Caucasus amid Russia’s declining influence. Yet Azerbaijan’s ascendant trajectory puts severe limitations on their ability to influence it and Armenia. Of the three, Turkey looks the least constrained.

The little-known conflict causing a ruckus in the Caucasus

In September, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, a war that has been cold since the demise of the Soviet Union, rapidly heated back up. Azerbaijan, after a lightning military campaign that it described as an ‘anti-terrorist’ operation, reclaimed the mountainous province of Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave within its borders that has been run by a breakaway Armenian administration since 1992.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev hailed the ‘reintegration’ of the province into Azerbaijan, while pledging to protect the rights of its Armenian population. Unconvinced by these reassurances, more than 100,000 Armenians fled the region they know as Artsakh and crossed into Armenia proper. With winter setting in, a humanitarian crisis now looms on Europe’s southern perimeter.

Ethnic relations are often tense in the Caucasus region, with its complex demographics, contested histories and overlapping claims to ‘homelands’. This is particularly so in Nagorno-Karabakh, control of which, since the 1400s, has passed between Armenian, Turkic, Persian and Russian hands.

In the early 20th century, the newly independent Armenian and Azerbaijani republics tussled over the territory before the Soviet Union swallowed them both. Joseph Stalin set the scene for ongoing rancour by apportioning Nagorno-Karabakh to the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, despite its overwhelming Armenian majority. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians took matters into their own hands, reportedly massacring Azerbaijanis at Khojaly in 1992 and expelling them from Shusha and Aghdam. Azerbaijan never forgot, or forgave.

The events of this year, along with a 2020 Azerbaijani campaign to recapture the region, are but the latest in a longer cycle of ethnic tit for tat. Azerbaijan’s comprehensive victory and its offer last month to hold peace talks with Armenia could be seen as an apparent resolution of an intercommunal conflict on the fringes of Europe that policymakers need no longer worry about. However, the conflict will still have significant geopolitical and diplomatic implications, both in the Caucasus and beyond.

In late 2022, Azerbaijan blockaded the Lachin corridor linking Nagorno-Karabagh to Armenia. The blockade broke the terms of the Russia-brokered 2020 peace deal that had brought some measure of calm to the region, and created rapidly deteriorating conditions for the province’s Armenian residents. Although the matter was discussed at the UN Security Council, it earned little international criticism. Despite a centuries-long presence, the Armenians were often deemed ‘separatist’ because the territory is recognised as part of Azerbaijan. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was one of few to speak out, condemning Baku’s decision to ‘create facts on the ground by military force’ despite its repeated assurances that it would not do so.

September’s escalating tensions and the departure of the Armenian population en masse apparently took EU diplomats by surprise. In a since-deleted post on X, the EU Commission stated that it would step up support to those ‘who have decided to flee Nagorno-Karabakh’, a tepid reference to what has amounted to ethnic cleansing.

A Turkish journalist similarly stated that Armenians went ‘of their own accord’, but there can be little doubt that they left fearing for their lives.

Baku makes bold statements about protecting multiculturalism, but its actions speak louder than words. A street in Nagorno-Karabakh’s largest city, Stepanakert, has been renamed after Enver Pasha, the architect of the 1915 Armenian genocide. Azerbaijan has also been accused of wilfully destroying Armenian cultural sites elsewhere, though Armenia has also been accused of using the same tactics.

The EU has since announced €5 million in humanitarian funding for peoples displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh, while the director of USAID, Samantha Power, jetted into Yerevan, the Armenian capital, in a show of solidarity. Armenians on social media, however, said it was too little too late. They may have a point.

Azerbaijan’s skilful diplomacy and its importance as an energy supplier to Europe have muted Western responses to its increasingly combative positioning in recent years. In 2022, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hailed Azerbaijan as a ‘reliable, trustworthy partner’ after securing increased Azerbaijani gas supplies to Europe. She made no mention of its bellicose posturing, or of the lack of political freedoms for the Azerbaijanis themselves, who face many human rights violations, including attacks on the country’s independent media.

Despite the prospect of new peace talks, some Armenians fear that Azerbaijan’s designs are not limited to Nagorno-Karabakh. Certain Azerbaijani figures retain irredentist aspirations, speaking of ‘Western Azerbaijan’, meaning Armenia. There’s also chatter about establishing a so-called Zangezur corridor, which would link Azerbaijan and Turkey through Armenian territory.

Joint Azerbaijani–Turkish military manoeuvres in October did little to quell Armenian fears. Turkey is both Armenia’s historical enemy and Azerbaijan’s staunchest ally, and some analysts describe its posture as one of increasing militarism. It has certainly recently adopted a more assertive foreign policy, which has had repercussions across the Caucasus, eastern Mediterranean and Balkans.

Nonetheless, Azerbaijan has likely overplayed its hand. Some European diplomats are rethinking how they deal with Baku. Armenia, for its part, is developing closer relations with France and, attempting to extract itself from Russia’s embrace, has sent its first aid package to Ukraine. Armenia is also inclined to enhance its relations with neighbouring Iran—a move that won’t be applauded by Israel, which counts Azerbaijan as an ally and, indeed, supplied much of the weaponry that made its campaign in Nagorno-Karabakh possible.

Control of Nagorno-Karabakh may be resolved for now, but regional dynamics in the Caucasus remain very much in flux.

Azerbaijan’s ultimatum on Nagorno-Karabakh leaves little room for de-escalation

On 4 October, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev delivered a televised speech on the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh that was heavy in inflammatory rhetoric but also represented a clear statement on Baku’s objectives. Aliyev laid out a number of demands for a ceasefire, reiterating parts of his UN General Assembly speech in September, including that Armenia withdraw its troops from the region and recognise the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.

Aliyev also called Azerbaijani soldiers ‘saviours, because they are liberating their native land from invaders’ and exhorted them to ‘drive [the Armenians] away like dogs’, raising the spectre of a mass expulsion of Armenians from the disputed territory.

Importantly, Aliyev’s statement came at a time when Azerbaijan appeared to have gained the upper hand in the conflict. Over the weekend, Azerbaijani troops managed to secure control of eight villages previously under the control of Armenian militia and also launched strikes against Stepanakert, the de facto capital of Nagorno-Karabakh. In retaliation, the ethnic Armenian Artsakh (the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh) Defence Army launched rocket strikes against Ganja, Azerbaijan’s second-largest city, in a troubling expansion of the conflict beyond the disputed enclave’s borders.

However, Aliyev’s ultimatum not only is practically impossible for Armenia to meet, but also represents a troublingly simplistic approach to a conflict that is deeply entrenched and without any clear path to resolution.

The almost exclusively Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh is a militarised society in which the ‘state and society … exist to support the military’. Of the approximately 150,000 residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, about 20,000 serve in the Artsakh Defence Army and many more are part of a ready reserve or are war veterans with easy access to weapons.

Armenia also devotes a significant proportion of its budget to subsidising Nagorno-Karabakh and sees the security of the Armenian population of the enclave as a central element in a broader struggle for Armenia’s survival. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan touched upon this theme in early October when he said, ‘We are probably living through the most decisive phase of our millennia-old history.’ He also declared that, ‘Victory and only victory is the outcome which we imagine at the end of this fight.’

Given this context, the practicality and symbolism of any Armenian disengagement from Nagorno-Karabakh make it almost impossible for Yerevan to accede to Baku’s demands. Doing so would require Yerevan to abandon ethnic Armenians in the enclave to an uncertain future that would likely involve widespread punitive reprisals from Azerbaijani forces. Aliyev clearly plays to Armenia’s fears by raising the spectre of the mass expulsion or even genocide of the disputed enclave’s Armenian population.

However, despite its recent successes, it is not yet clear whether Azerbaijan can capitalise on its current advantage and force Armenia’s capitulation without dramatically escalating its offensive operations.

On paper, the Azerbaijani military appears to have a distinct advantage over both the Artsakh Defence Army and the armed forces of Armenia. In 2017, Azerbaijan’s defence budget was approximately US$1.55 billion, significantly higher than Armenia’s US$430 million. Over the past decade, Azerbaijan’s military has lavished around US$24 billion on a modernisation program, significantly more than the US$4 billion Armenia spent on its armed forces during the same period. If measured in terms of raw firepower, Azerbaijan maintains clear superiority over Armenia.

However, Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh have a distinct home-ground advantage and occupy the higher ground in the enclave’s mountainous region, making it likely that Azerbaijan’s casualties will increase the further it advances. And with winter approaching, Baku has a limited window in which it can force its advantage, so it may feel compelled to press forward faster than is sustainable.

Still, it’s not yet clear how Baku’s strategy will play out. Matthew Bryza, a former co-chair of the Minsk group—tasked with facilitating negotiations between Yerevan and Baku—said on 2 October that Baku’s objectives were likely limited to recapturing some territory without overextending. But he also said that Baku will ‘need to continue into the higher ground … so that Azerbaijan will be able to defend that territory it has gained’, an objective that makes escalation more likely.

The rhetoric on both sides is also problematic. As noted by Thomas de Waal, an expert on the region, ‘Given that public expectations in both societies run extremely high, it will be harder for the leaders to stop soon and claim success. The risk of escalation and of mass destruction is alarmingly high.’

Another factor that increases the risk that the conflict will escalate into a war engulfing the entire region is the apparent absence of any external states able to step into the role of external mediator to effect a ceasefire. Armenia reached out directly to the US for support on 1 October. But Washington is ‘distracted by other bigger issues like China’ and its disengagement has created a power vacuum.

While Russia and Turkey have agreed that a ceasefire is needed, neither country is positioned to play a more constructive role, given that they’re both prejudiced by their support for opposing sides in the conflict. Nagorno-Karabakh could already be the latest front in a Russo-Turkish confrontation that expands into Syria and Libya.

The idea that Turkey could play a role as an honest broker is particularly untenable, since Ankara has clearly sided with Baku. There’s also a growing number of credible reports that Ankara has deployed between 320 and 1,000 ethnic Turkmen militants from northern Syria to Azerbaijan in support of Baku, dramatically changing the tenor of the conflict. The legacy of the Armenian genocide in the early 20th century also haunts Ankara’s role in the region.

De Waal pessimistically predicted that the conflict will continue ‘for at least another generation unless it can be smothered by an international security operation … [which] is highly unlikely in the current international situation’.

The bellicosity on display in both Baku and Yerevan is also making the prospect of a ceasefire increasingly unlikely, particularly as casualties mount on both sides. Given the events of the past week, the conflict is clearly approaching the point of no return while the rest of the world does little more than watch.

Nagorno-Karabakh conflict could quickly turn into regional war  

The latest flare-up in fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces that began in July and escalated in mid-September comes closest to the full-scale conflict that ensued between them in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the Soviet Union was disintegrating. It was centred on Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian enclave situated within the boundaries of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic that formed a part of the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1991 when Azerbaijan declared independence. The conflict was triggered by the attempt on the part of the Armenian leadership in Nagorno-Karabakh to break away from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, which also emerged as an independent state following the Soviet Union’s demise.

The war ended with a ceasefire in May 1994 at the cost of 30,000 dead and hundreds of thousands rendered homeless. It not only left Nagorno-Karabakh as a de facto independent polity ethnically cleansed of its Azerbaijani minority but also additional Azerbaijani territory surrounding the enclave under Armenian control.

Observers attributed the Armenian victory to Russian military support that turned the tide against Azerbaijan. Despite the efforts of the Minsk group chaired by Russia, France and the United States to broker an agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the future of Nagorno-Karabakh, the dispute has continued to fester for a quarter of a century with occasional bursts of limited armed conflict, the most serious before the latest one occurring in 2016.

The Armenian antagonism toward Turks—and Azerbaijanis are Turkic people with close cultural ties to Turkey—runs deep. The mass displacement and death of Armenians in Anatolia during World War I as a consequence of part of the Armenian population siding with Russia intensified anti-Turkish feelings among Armenians. This ethnically based resentment was channelled also against neighbouring Azerbaijani Turks.

This interethnic hostility was exacerbated by Moscow’s policy towards the Caucasus and Central Asia that deliberately aimed at creating tensions between neighbouring ethnic groups in non-Russian, especially Muslim, parts of the USSR. This policy, first developed under Stalin, was aimed at preventing the emergence of coordinated resistance in these regions against Moscow’s heavy-handed rule, including the Russification of the non-Russian population.

Central Asia abounds in examples of this policy. Minority ethnic groups are strewn throughout Central Asian states as a result of incorporation of enclaves of such groups within ethnically defined and denominated states. Nagorno-Karabakh’s inclusion within Azerbaijan was one example of deliberate mixing of hostile ethnicities in the Caucasus with the same goal in mind.

The lid was kept on Armenian–Azerbaijani hostility, especially in Nagorno-Karabakh, as long as both Azerbaijan and Armenia formed part of the Soviet Union. However, with the disintegration of the USSR, interethnic antagonism resurfaced with greater vigour, leading to the war between the two countries that lasted until 1994.

It’s not clear why the conflict has reignited now after having been dormant for more than two decades. There’s speculation that it could have as much to do with internal challenges to both regimes that have prompted them to create nationalist xenophobia to divert the anger of their populations.

Both sides have blamed each other for starting the fighting, which has now spread beyond the Azerbaijani border with Nagorno-Karabakh to the international boundary between the two countries. The president of Azerbaijan and the prime minister of Armenia have rejected suggestions of talks to bring the conflict to a close despite such calls by the United Nations, Russia and the United States.

The conflict has raised concerns about the stability of the South Caucasus region since major pipelines carrying oil and gas to world markets traverse this area. The South Caucasus Pipeline, also known as Baku–Tbilisi–Erzurum Pipeline, carries natural gas from the Shah Deniz gas field in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea to Turkey. It runs parallel to the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan oil pipeline that carries oil from the Azeri–Chirag–Deepwater Gunashli field and condensate from Shah Deniz across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to the Ceyhan marine terminal on the Turkish Mediterranean coast. Crude oil from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan is also transported via this pipeline.

Equally, if not more, alarming is the danger that if the confrontation escalates it may draw in external powers, Turkey and Russia in particular, that would widen the scope of the conflict. Turkey has traditionally been a staunch supporter of Azerbaijan and condemned Armenia in no uncertain terms for beginning the conflict when fighting broke out in September. Russia considers Armenia a strategic ally, supported it militarily in earlier bouts of fighting with Azerbaijan and is treaty-bound to come to Armenia’s defence if the war spreads beyond Nagorno-Karabakh across the international frontier. But, it also considers Azerbaijan a strategic partner and has supplied arms to Baku. Russia will therefore have a major problem on its hands if the conflict escalates. Moreover, if Russia and Turkey line up on opposite sides of this conflict it will greatly harm Russia’s attempt to woo Turkey away from NATO, especially since the two countries are already supporting opposing camps in Libya and Syria.

Israel and Iran also have stakes in the conflict. Israel is a major supplier of arms to Azerbaijan, and Iran, despite its attempt to appear neutral, has long supported Armenia. Both Iran and Azerbaijan are Shia but Azerbaijan’s irredentist claim after independence on the northern Iranian provinces of East and West Azerbaijan has more than neutralised their religious affinity.

There are too many external fingers in this Caucasus pie and unless this fire is doused quickly it has the potential to turn into a major regional conflict.