Erdogan meets Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev as thousands flee Nagorno-Karabakh region
Sep 25, 2023
Baku [Azerbaijan], September 25 : Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived for a meeting with Azerbaijan counterpart Ilham Aliyev even as thousands of ethnic Armenians continued to flee Nagorno-Karabakh after Baku defeated the breakaway region’s fighters in a military operation last week, Al Jazeera reported.
Notably, Erdogan's administration gave Azerbaijan military assistance in 2020 after its forces expelled Armenian insurgents from a sizable portion of Nagorno-Karabakh.
According to state media, Erdogan will also attend a groundbreaking and an opening ceremony in the area in addition to meeting and holding a news conference with Aliyev.
Following a 24-hour military campaign by the considerably bigger Azerbaijani military, Armenian rebels in Nagorno-Karabakh, an area that is regarded by the international community as belonging to Azerbaijan but contains a majority of ethnic Armenians, were compelled to agree to a ceasefire last week, Al Jazeera reported.
The majority of Armenians in Karabakh reject Azerbaijan's assurances of their rights.
More than 2,900 persons had entered Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh as of 5 am (01:00 GMT) on Monday, according to a statement from the Armenian administration.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated that he anticipated that about 1,20,000 inhabitants would evacuate the area for Armenia due to "the danger of ethnic cleansing".
Nagorno-Karabakh is situated in an area that has, over the course of centuries, been ruled by Persians, Turks, Russians, Ottomans, and Soviets.
Both Azerbaijan and Armenia staked claim to the territory following the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917. Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it was proclaimed as an autonomous territory inside Azerbaijan.
Following the collapse of the USSR, the First Karabakh War, which lasted from 1988 to 1994 and claimed tens of thousands of lives, saw the Armenian population of the area overthrow Azerbaijani rule, Al Jazeera reported.
Azerbaijan regained swathes of territory in and around Nagorno-Karabakh in the second war over the region in 2020.
The Turkish President, last week, expressed his support for Azerbaijan’s latest military operation, which it launched on Tuesday.
