Speaker:
Laçin İdil Öztığ,
Associate Professor, Yıldız Technical University
15 December 2022, Thursday at 12.40
Bilkent University, FEASS, A130 Seminar Room
“A Comparative Analysis of Turkish Foreign Policy on the Azerbaijan-Armenia Conflicts”
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the relative stability provided in the Caucasus region during the Cold War period left its place to instability and conflicts. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that started in 1988 evolved into a full-scale war in 1992. The Nakhichevan conflict erupted in the same year. Another full-scale war in Nagorno-Karabakh took place in 2020. This article analyzes Turkish foreign policy in the context of the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflicts. During the first Nagorno-Karabakh war, Turkey gave political and military support to Azerbaijan, but this support was not tangible to change the course of the conflict. Turkey showed an ardent interest in playing a mediator role. However, its mediator role was limited due to domestic and external circumstances. During the Nakhichevan conflict, Turkish policymakers brought up the possibility of interfering militarily to end the conflict. However, its pro-Azerbaijani position took the form of discursive reactions. When the second Nagorno-Karabakh war erupted in 2020, Turkey played a much more assertive role to the point of changing the course of the war in favor of Azerbaijan by providing the country with Bayraktar TB2 drones which proved effective in the wars in Syria and Libya. This article compares Turkey’s position on the Azeri-Armenian conflicts and discusses its impacts and implications in view of the regional dynamics.