Following Azerbaijan’s victory over the separatist region’s fighters last week, thousands of ethnic Armenians have started to leave Nagorno-Karabakh. On Monday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will meet with his ally, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev.
Erdogan will spend a day in the autonomous Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan, which is sandwiched between Armenia, Iran, and Turkey, to speak with Aliyev about the situation in the Karabakh region, according to the Turkish president’s office.
After a 24-hour military campaign by the much bigger Azerbaijani military, the Armenians of Karabakh, an area recognised by the world community as belonging to Azerbaijan but previously outside of its control, were compelled to enter a ceasefire last week.
The leadership of Nagorno-Karabakh told Reuters on Sunday that the region’s 120,000 Armenian residents had begun to leave because they were afraid of persecution and ethnic cleansing and did not want to live as a part of Azerbaijan.
In a report published early on Monday, the Armenian authorities claimed that as of midnight (2000 GMT), more than 1,500 people had entered Armenia from Nagorno-Karabkah.
According to a Reuters correspondent in the Karabakh city called as Stepanakert by Armenia and Khankendi by Azerbaijan, those with petrol had begun to go through the Lachin corridor towards the border with Armenia.
Reuters images showed a large number of vehicles leaving the city and travelling up the hilly curves of the road.
In the past 30 years, Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars over the enclave; in the most recent fight, which lasted six weeks in 2020, Azerbaijan won back large portions of territory in and around Nagorno-Karabakh.
Erdogan declared last week that he supports the objectives of Azerbaijan’s most recent military operation but did not participate in it. Erdogan provided the Azeris with weapons during the 2020 battle.
The United States and other Western allies of Armenia have denounced the antagonism, which Armenia claims resulted in more than 200 deaths and 400 injuries during the Azeri operation last week.
The defence ministry of Azerbaijan announced on Sunday that it has seized additional weapons from Armenian rebels, including mines, artillery rounds, rockets, and ammunition.
Armenians in Karabakh are refusing to accept Azerbaijan’s assurance that their rights will be upheld once the territory is integrated. Armenia demanded that a UN team be sent there straight away to keep an eye on security and human rights in the area.
According to David Babayan, a counsellor to Samvel Shahramanyan, president of the self-declared Republic of Artsakh, “ninety-nine point nine percent prefer to leave our historic lands.”
(Reuters)
