Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the NATO appear to be on completely divergent paths while dealing with the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Even though the head of the Western military alliance asked the Turkish president to calm down down the fight, Erdogan has placed himself in a directly opposite position.
“We are deeply concerned by the escalation of hostilities. All sides should immediately cease fighting and find a way forward toward a peaceful resolution,” Arab News quoted NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg as saying after talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.
“And I expect Turkey to use its considerable influence to calm tensions.”
But minutes before his own talks with Stoltenberg, Erdogan urged Azerbaijan to keep fighting until it retook land it lost in a war with Armenia in the early 1990s that killed 30,000.
Azerbaijan was “responding to an attack and saving Karabakh from its occupation,” Erdogan said.
“We, Turkey, say that we are always on the Azerbaijan side. As long as the Karabakh issue is not resolved, it will not be possible to end conflict in the region,” the Turkish President said.
With this position, Ankara has added more spice to its already strained relationship with NATO. Turkey’s membership of NATO has been under increasing strain since Ankara bought a missile defense system from Russia, the main military threat to the alliance, and began exploring for oil and gas in territorial waters belonging to Greece, a NATO ally.
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