Nagorno-Karabakh: a New Turkish Front Against Russia ? Pierre Razoux Academic and Research Director of the FMES Institute
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13.10.2020 Nagorno-Karabakh: a new Turkish front against Russia ? Pierre Razoux Academic and Research Director of the FMES Institute ABSTRACT By encouraging Azeri President Ilham Aliyev in his attempt to regain Nagorno-Karabakh, President Erdogan opened a new front facing the Kremlin to boast a symbolic success with his population and to force Vladimir Putin to accept a compromise on the other Syrian, Libyan, Mediterranean and energy fronts. This strategy is not without risk because the conflict could spread to the secessionist republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in neighbouring Georgia. Above all, it could provoke an escalation of tensions with Iran. The relatively even military balance between Armenia and Azerbaijan does not allow either of the two belligerents to conduct a victorious blitzkrieg against the territory of the other, a fortiori in the very mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh. Any confrontation will structurally lead to a war of attrition, leaving time for the Turkish and Russian presidents to negotiate. Forcing his luck, Recep Tayyip Erdogan could be tempted to annex the northern part of Cyprus soon, exchanging his disengagement from the South Caucasus for the silence of the Kremlin. By encouraging Azeri President Ilham Aliyev in his attempt to reconquer the secessionist province of Nagorno-Karabakh defended by Armenia (launched on September 27, 2020), has President Recep Tayyip Erdogan voluntarily opened a new front against the Kremlin to force Vladimir Putin to find a compromise on the other Syrian, Libyan, Mediterranean and energy fronts? It must be noted that the counteroffensive of Fayez el-Sarraj in Libya, supported by the Turkish President, is trampling on in front of Sirte1, that the battle of Idlib is not turning to the advantage of pro-Turkish forces in Syria - even if the death-blow of the Syrian regime, supported by Moscow, is slow in coming - and that Turkey has had to back-pedal in the Eastern Mediterranean under triple pressure from the United States, NATO2 and the Europeans3. It was thus time for the Turkish President to create a diversion - or to encourage it - so as to boast of a symbolic success with his population and make it forget the economic difficulties. What could be better for him than to agitate the Armenian scarecrow, the issue most likely to federate all the strata of a Turkish society still hostile to Christian Armenia? This time he favored the indirect approach by targeting Nagorno-Karabakh, through an intermediary proxy, without taking the risk of a direct attack on Armenian territory that would have undoubtedly led to a direct response from Russia. 1 Ahmed Eleiba, « Ankara islosing hand in Libya », Egyptian Center for Security Studies, October 3, 2020. Observation confirmed by several institutional observers contacted by the author. 2 The Turkish government accepted on October 1, 2020 a mediation mechanism with the Greek government under the aegis of Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO. 3 Didier Billion, « Pourquoi la Grèce et la Turquie ont finalement opté pour le dialogue », France 24, September 24, 2020. PRESIDENT ERDOGAN'S NEW SOMERSAULT The Turkish President is undoubtedly taking advantage of the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia to strengthen his power on a background of exacerbated nationalism and expansionist ambition, as the press correspondents present on the spot testify4. His unabashed tweets go in the same direction, especially when he declares, less than an hour after the outbreak of hostilities : "The Turkish nation supports its Azerbaijani brothers with all its means, as always," and then when outbids a few days later, saying, "We support our Azerbaijani brothers in their struggle to save their occupied lands and protect their homeland" and "Every unpunished crime (the annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh) makes its perpetrator more insatiable; every uncounted crime invites new persecution".5 The presence of a handful of Turkish F-16 fighters pre-positioned in Azerbaijan during the summer of 2020 within the framework of bilateral exercises between Ankara and Baku, then deployed on the air base of Ganja a few days before the launch of the Azerbaijani offensive6, leaves little doubt about the premeditation of the Turkish President. This henceforth proven presence gives more credibility to the words of the spokesman of the Armenian Ministry of Defense indicating that one of its Su-25 ground attack aircraft had been shot down by a Turkish F-16 the day after the outbreak of hostilities. This may also have been one of the reasons why the Nagorno-Karabakh army fired some venerable SCUD missiles at the town of Ganja near the air base where the Turkish F-16s were apparently based. The presence of Syrian fighters on the battlefield, close to the Iranian border, constitutes the second tangible element in favor of the premeditation thesis. On October 1, 2020, during the European summit in Brussels, President Emmanuel Macron pointed at Turkey's responsibility by asserting that 300 Islamist fighters from Syria had transited through the Turkish city of Gazantiep, not far from the Idlib front in Syria7. His remarks have not been denied, but reinforced by those of Iranian President Hassan Rohani, who was moved by the presence of these fighters near Iranian territory, at the extreme south of the front line8. Is this to be seen as an additional message from the Turkish President to his Russian and Iranian counterparts, his two partners in the Astana process9, in the mode « I have the capacity to cause a nuisance against you two if we do not get along »? His risky gamble illustrates in any case the fact that the Astana Process is not the panacea that Moscow, Tehran and Ankara want to convince us of. This strategy of the boutefeu is not without risk because the conflict could spread to the secessionist republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in neighboring Georgia, at the risk of leading to a new Russian military intervention in the Caucasus. Above all, it could provoke an escalation of tensions with Iran, if the mortar fire that targeted Iranian territory during the first week of fighting were to intensify. Tehran did not hesitate to utter barely veiled threats in the direction of Baku and Ankara. In a telephone conversation with Ilham Aliyev, President Hassan Rohani stressed "the importance of respecting the territorial integrity of the IRI, as well as the lives of Iranian citizens in the regions bordering Nagorno-Karabakh ... The Islamic Republic of Iran will not tolerate the targeting of its citizens"10. The day before, the diplomatic adviser to the Supreme Leader had stated: "We advise our 4 Gabriel Détrie, Le Point, Octobre 8, 2020 :https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/haut-karabakh-la-nouvelle-guerre-d-erdogan-08-10-2020- 2395511_24.php 5 President Erdogan's Twitter account, September 27, October 1 and 2, 2020. 6 Laurent Lagneau, « L’imagerie satellitaire confirme que des F-16 turcs sont basés en Azerbaïdjan », OPEX 360, Octobre 8, 2020 : http://www.opex360.com/2020/10/08/limagerie-satellitaire-confirme-que-des-f-16-turcs-sont-bases-en-azerbaidjan-a-80-km-du-haut- karabakh/ 7 Although he did not specify precisely where these fighters entered Azerbaijan. 8 At a Council of Ministers meeting; FARS Agency, October 7, 2020. 9 The Astana Process, set up on May 4, 2017 between Russia, Iran and Turkey, aims at resolving the frictions and enforcing the ceasefire zones in Syria but also the respect of the zones of influence claimed by these three countries. 10 Agence FARS, October 6, 2020. 2 Turkish friends to stop fanning the flames of conflict and to join us in helping to find a negotiated solution"11. To give more weight to their words, the Iranians massed infantry, artillery and drones on their border with Azerbaijan. In the very uncertain context which precedes the American presidential election, the Iranian government is nonetheless seeking to calm the situation in the region in order to be able to engage in dialogue with a new American administration, even as Washington envisages closing its embassy in Baghdad after repeated harassment by Shiite militias subservient to Tehran. The Iranian regime is all the more embarrassed because it is strategically close to Armenia 12, even though the latter is Christian Orthodox, and because it distrusts Turkish-speaking Azerbaijan, even though this country is predominantly Shiite. It is true that Azerbaijan has never abandoned its ambitions to reforge "Great Azerbaijan" and that the Azeri population is numerous within the Iranian ethnic mosaic. Some Iranians believe that the reconquest of Nagorno-Karabakh could be only a first step in the agenda of the Aliyev family. All are wary of the instrumentalisation of the ethnic factor, as are many academics13. Iran also distrusts the close military cooperation between Azerbaijan and Israel. One element seems certain: given the ambient hostility and the weight of history, Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not need to deploy much effort to convince President Aliyev to launch an assault on Nagorno-Karabakh. Indeed, President Aliyev kept telling his people that the time had come to regain the territories lost in 1994. The skirmishes of 2016 and then of July 2020 only served to stir up the determination of the Azerbaijani President, all the more so since he needed a success - even symbolic - to justify his spending on arms (when the price of a barrel of oil was high), to restore his coat of arms and to erase the memory of the war of independence (1988-1994) which resulted in nearly 20,000 Azerbaijani deaths. A WAR OF ATTRITION Without going back over the historical causes of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict - there is a plethora of articles summarising the positions of the two camps - let us analyse the battlefield, the military balance, what is known about the fighting and the consequences of all this on the probable continuation of operations if the provisional ceasefires that came into force on October 10, 2020 and then on October 18, 2020 were to shatter.