Turkey is increasingly isolated as the international community pushes for an immediate ceasefire in the escalating war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The fighting began more than a week ago, after tensions over a contested territory spiraled into conflict.
But while the world is calling for peace, the Turkish leader is pushing his Azeri ally to escalate against Armenia. In a rare show of common support for a ceasefire, the French, U.S., and Russian foreign ministers will make a joint call for a ceasefire. The fact that Russia and the West are effectively on the same side here reflects the fact that no one, par Azerbaijan and Turkey, has interest in continued escalation. Russia fears the destabilization of its southern border. The west has grave concerns over rising civilian suffering. These worries have only grown as we’ve witnessed increasingly lethal strikes on civilian centers. Lacking effective intelligence and technical targeting capacities, the Armenian and Azeri militaries have resorted to lobbing missiles at each other and hoping for a hit. But it’s clear that Azerbaijan has the upper hand. Its forces are advancing apace, and the Armenian military has lost operational cohesion.
That brings us back to Turkey. Ankara is actively supporting the Azeri war effort with the support of militia fighters and targeting intelligence. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees this as a grand opportunity to further advance his delusion of a new Turkish empire which commands regional politics. But as the conflict becomes increasingly bitter, its nationalist-emotive quality also deepens. That complicates the agreement of a stable ceasefire.
We saw an example of this dynamic on Monday when President Ilham Aliyev addressed his people. With heavily nationalistic rhetoric, Aliyev warned that “for almost 30 years, Armenian executioners have occupied our land, destroyed all our historical, religious and cultural monuments. We will restore all cities. We will restore all our mosques destroyed by Armenians. Life will return to these areas. We have put an end to the attempts of Armenians to change our historical names and falsify history, as well as to erase the historical and cultural heritage of the Azeri people. The historical names of our settlements are being restored and will be restored.”
The world should be concerned by this presentation of the conflict not simply as one over territory, but for the very identity and honor of the nation. Staking his political identity on the ideal of a purified national liberation, Aliyev shows that he has little interest in compromise. He believes that he can pummel Armenia into defeat. Turkey’s encouragement of Azerbaijan is central to Aliyev’s confidence. And just as Erdogan’s government is pushing Azerbaijan to maintain the offensive, it’s decrying external efforts for peace. Already despising French President Emmanuel Macron, who is now leading Western diplomatic efforts here, one of Erdogan’s ministers this weekend compared Macron to Stalin. That criticism was in relation to Macron’s recent call for improved Islamic integration with French civil society, but it reflects Erdogan’s disinterest in yielding to international pressure.
The choice for the international community, then, is whether to accept the continued bloodletting or to leverage trade and economic relations with Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Turkey in order to extract a ceasefire. If the West and Russia simultaneously threaten such pressure, Azerbaijan and Turkey will be forced to join the negotiating table.
