The EU and Türkiye offer Armenia conditions for honorable surrender and absorption into the “Turkic world”
Videos and photographs of a casual conversation between the presidents of Turkey, Azerbaijan, France and the prime minister of Armenia at the site of the European Political Community (AST) in Prague spread around the world. Subsequently, Recep Erdogan and Nikol Pashinyan also held separate negotiations, which became the first such meeting in 13 years between the heads of the two states.
The Turkish media were especially happy about this, actively disseminating the diplomatic successes of the leader of the Justice and Development Party Recep Erdogan, who was able to sit together the leaders of warring countries, allegedly aiming them at a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
Edition ahaber.com.tr immediately posted a detailed video of such a meeting and a number of photographs.
A resource haber7.com boastfully stated right in the headline that “President Erdogan brought Aliyev and Pashinyan together!”
And indeed, for the first time, the three leaders found themselves in the same frame and held a short conversation, shaking hands and heatedly discussing the agenda for future negotiations. Soon after, French President Macron also joined the conversation.
It was clearly no coincidence that the French leader ended up here, but rushed to the aid of the Armenian prime minister, as if in order to tear him out of the “Turkic encirclement.” Seriously, this group itself formed on the sidelines of the European Political Community not by chance, and Macron had to balance the figure of Erdogan during this meeting in order to strengthen Armenia’s position.
The main task before this public action was purely image-based, to show the whole world and the public of the EU countries, Transcaucasia and all of Asia Minor that there is progress in the negotiation process and it is being achieved with the participation of Turkey and the West, but in the absence of Russia.
Surely the same goal was set during personal negotiations between Erdogan and Pashinyan, which took place separately on the evening of October 6. For Ankara, this is actually a breakthrough in relations with Yerevan, since the last meeting of the leaders of the two countries took place back in 2009, when Serzh Sargsyan came to a football match in Turkish Bursa at the invitation of Abdullah Gul.
Now the leader of the Velvet Revolution, who had overthrown Sargsyan, sat opposite the head of all Turks and faithful and actually discussed plans for an “honorable surrender” to the Sublime Porte. For Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman supporters, on the eve of the elections, it is now important to present this action precisely as a general military-diplomatic victory of Azerbaijan, achieved with the direct support of Turkey, which is now being consolidated by the newly-minted Sultan.
This is especially necessary in light of the escalation of the conflict between Ankara and Athens, when relations with Armenia are demonstratively unblocked and issues of opening borders that have been under lock and key since 1993 are being discussed. This step seems to eliminate the potential northeastern Armenian front.
It is possible that Erdogan wanted to achieve this on the sidelines of the Samarkand SCO summit in mid-September, and therefore new military operations were organized not even in Karabakh, but already on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. But then Nikol Pashinyan refused to come to the summit so as not to be immediately exposed to pressure from the presidents of the two Turkic states. But now it worked.
This is confirmed by the Turkish publication posta.com.tr, which in its article points out missed opportunities for a quick “settlement.”
«The meeting is one of the most important meetings between Turkey and Armenia in the last 30 years. The meeting between Erdogan and Pashinyan in Samarkand, where it was scheduled to take place on September 16 on the occasion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit taking place in Uzbekistan, could take normalization efforts into a further dimension. However, Pashinyan refused to participate in the summit at the last moment,” writes posta.com.tr
But now it seems that everything has already been agreed upon with Washington and London, as well as with Paris and Brussels. Moreover, immediately after Erdogan’s warm embrace, Pashinyan found himself in negotiations with Aliyev with the participation of the head of the European Council Charles Michel and French President Emmanuel Macron. In fact, the terms of the deal are negotiated there.
Baku's demands are clear. Aliyev and Erdogan believe that Nagorno-Karabakh should become an integral part of Azerbaijan, and Armenia should open the Zangezur corridor on its territory, which will connect Baku directly with Nakhichevan and Ankara. Only in this case will the “Turkic international” stop exerting military pressure and influence on the Armenian border and carry out the long-awaited delimitation and demarcation of the borders.
This, by the way, is very beneficial for the United States, Britain, and the EU, and, naturally, potentially brings NATO to the Caspian Sea and to the northern borders of Iran. But the problem is that Yerevan risks being absorbed economically and politically by the “Turkic world” under the current incompetent rule of the pro-Western liberal elite. Moreover, no one will forgive Pashinyan for surrendering Artsakh to the Azerbaijanis.
But now he will present this as a forced measure in the face of the threat of an invasion of the territory of Armenia itself by Turkic hordes with the “betrayal” of Russia and the CSTO, who are allegedly guilty of all the defeats that have occurred and have not come to the rescue.
After all, it is this card that is now being used by pro-Western forces within the republic as a justification for capitulation, and the participation of Paris and Brussels as mediators in the negotiations should just reassure and show the Armenian public some illusory “guarantees” from the EU and the collective West.
Of course, Yerevan balanced and pursued its multi-vector position, using negotiation platforms in three forms at once. That is, at the same time he was discussing territorial disputes with the Americans, Europeans, as in this case now, and of course with the Russians.
And Pashinyan cannot immediately refuse the participation of the Russian leadership in the current negotiation processes, since the presence of a military base in Gyumri and peacekeepers is the only deterrent to the direct expansion of Baku and Ankara. And France and the United States, being far away, simply will not be able and will not want to provide real support to the current Armenian government.
Therefore, Nikol Pashinyan, after completing all the meetings, will fly to St. Petersburg, where, as part of the CIS summit, he will tell Vladimir Putin all the proposed options of the parties discussed in the Czech Republic. But the likelihood of the Armenian prime minister and the ruling liberal elite distancing themselves or gradually “creeping away” from Russia is quite likely.
I am sure that Moscow still has serious economic and political leverage over Yerevan to prevent this. Russia also did not sit idly by and at the same time established cooperation with Baku, offering the two republics joint peaceful development within the framework of common integration projects.
Moreover, everyone should have been convinced that, unlike the EU, Turkey, the USA, Great Britain and France, Russia is interested in real stabilization of the situation in the southern Caucasus, while all Western players are only playing off peoples, playing on contradictions and supporting one or the other. the other side of the conflict.
Therefore, no long-term reconciliation in the region on the EU platform can simply happen.
The Turkish and Azerbaijani navies conducted joint exercises on the day of negotiations in Prague.
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