Turkey’s involvement in Caucasus flare-up aimed at new deal with Russia

Turkey’s involvement in reignited border clashes in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region is aimed at striking a new deal with Russia, Russian analyst Maxim A. Suchkov said early on Friday.

Turkey has thrown its firm support behind Azerbaijan, saying it is ready to do whatever is necessary to eject Armenian forces from the region. Russia, on its part, has a defence pact with neighbouring Armenia, but sells arms to both conflicting countries.

Suchkov said that Turkey does not seek a war in Nagorno-Karabakh, but is using its support  for Azerbaijan as a means “to disguise its interest” and expand its zone of influence in the Caucasus.

“Turkey is hopscotching crises – Greece and Cyprus, Libya, Syria, now Karabakh – to increase its capitalisation in the market of regional powers, with great power ambitions,” he said in a series of Twitter posts.

Suchkov’s remarks follow a discussion between Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in a phone call on Thursday. Lavrov said Turkey’s deployment of Syrian fighters in Nagorno-Karabakh was “unacceptable”, but also agreed to closely coordinate to stabilise the situation, according to a Russian Foreign Ministry statement.

Lavrov also turned down Ankara’s proposal to set up a “Syria-type” format for a deal, Suchkov said.

As part of Ankara’s strategy achieve its regional interest, Turkey intends to create a “mechanism of interaction” with Russia over Nagorno-Karabakh, “which will be another link in the chain of Putin-Erdoğan deals in Russia’s southern security flank”, Suchkov said.

He described earlier deals between Moscow and Ankara as having been mutually beneficial but also “fraught with complications”, citing the Syrian and Libyan civil wars, where the two foreign powers support opposing sides.

“Despite all the difficulties between the two in Syria and Libya, it’s crystallised that Turkey sees Russia as a resource for creating its strategic autonomy, while Russia needs Turkey as a tool of increasing its own authority as a great power,” the foreign policy expert said.

“The success of Russia’s strategy in the Caucasus depends on Moscow’s ability to do effective balancing (between Armenia and Azerbaijan). The success of Turkey’s strategy depends on scale of its political and military support for Turkic groups. Russia’s strategy more difficult to execute. Turkey’s is easier.”