By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

Following a military offensive that began on Sept. 19, Azerbaijan put an end to the unrecognized 32-year-old Republic of Artsakh, the Armenian name for the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region that lay within Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan first starved the population in the enclave during a nine-month-long blockade of the Lachin corridor linking them to Armenia itself. They had no electricity, no water, and numerous food and medicine shortages.

The lightning assault that followed saw the weakened Armenian population flee and its self-declared civilian and military administration capitulate in just a few days.

Russia, Armenia’s traditional ally, had brokered a cease-fire agreement that ended an earlier war in 2020. That also resulted in a major Azerbaijani victory. Over 3,800 Armenian soldiers died, a high toll for a country of 2.9 million with a declining birthrate.

Despite the introduction of Russian peacekeepers as part of the cease-fire, negotiations between Baku and Yerevan failed to produce a permanent peace treaty or resolve the status of the Armenian administration in the de facto state.

Putin in 2020 had promised that Russian peacekeepers would protect the region’s population, maintain the cease-fire, and assure access on the corridor connecting Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia. Russia failed on all three counts.

Many analysts ascribe the Russian failure to the Kremlin being distracted by its war in Ukraine. The focus on the war has undermined Russia’s authority and influence throughout its geopolitical neighbourhood.

Russia has turned away from Armenia toward Turkey and Azerbaijan, because of Turkey’s importance in Russia’s war against Ukraine. It needs Turkish help in safeguarding the regional energy and transportation routes in the South Caucasus.

In the latest round of bloodletting, Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh allegedly abandoned their posts, giving way to Azerbaijani forces. In fact, Russia’s pro-Baku tilt has become more pronounced since its war against Ukraine has made it more reliant on Azerbaijan as a conduit for selling oil and gas.

Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is now seeking to move away from Moscow, partly in a bid to ensure his own survival. His relations with the Kremlin were already patchy. These have soured further since the 2020 war. Pashinyan believes that his best bets now are friendship with the West and peace with Turkey, but he has a very weak hand to play.

On the other hand, a strengthened Turkey is Azerbaijan’s closest regional ally and in 2020 it had helped the oil-rich state seize back territories that had been occupied by Armenia since the 1990s.

Ankara’s top geo-political interests in the region include establishing diplomatic relations with Armenia, setting up direct trade routes to Azerbaijan and other Central Asian Turkic republics, and reducing Western and Russian influence in the South Caucasus by increasing its own footprint. 

Turkey has used “normalization” talks with Armenia to press the fulfillment of Azerbaijan’s demands as a precondition to reopening its sealed land borders and establishing diplomatic ties with Yerevan.

Beyond the short- and medium-term geopolitical benefits, better relations with Armenia could bolster Ankara’s global prestige. Turkish sources describe the ongoing talks as “a once-in-a-lifetime, historic opportunity.” 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has begun negotiations with Pashinyan through one of his most trusted foreign policy hands, Serdar Kilic, a career diplomat whose previous posting was as Turkey’s ambassador to the United States. 

Last June, in a first for a Turkish president, Erdogan invited Pashinyan to his swearing-in ceremony following his re-election and held a phone call with him on Sept. 11. Ankara’s engagement with Yerevan has continued since the latest war.

But Armenians now fear Azerbaijan, with Turkish backing, will seek to grab more territory in Syunik, the southernmost province of Armenia, to create a land route connecting the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan with the rest of the country. 

The Zangezur corridor, which borders Turkey and Iran but is separated by Armenia, would open a shorter and more secure land route from Turkey to Azerbaijan. Ankara seeks to deepen its trade and political ties with Azerbaijan and the Turkic Central Asian republics.

Iran, though, has opposed the corridor project, fearing it would close off Tehran’s land links to Russia via Armenia and Georgia. It also worries that a stronger Azerbaijan might trigger secessionist sentiments among Iran’s own Azerbaijani population. They comprise the largest minority ethnic group in Iran and are concentrated in the country’s far northwest, bordering Azerbaijan.

Armenians are aware that without Russia’s abandonment, things might not have turned out this way. Both the United States and the European Union are seeking to fill that void and show solidarity towards Armenians, but they can do little.

After the Azerbaijani victory, Washington called for the deployment of an international monitoring mission to Nagorno-Karabakh, while France has promised Armenia military equipment. But such statements ring empty for Armenians who saw the world do nothing while Azerbaijan attacked Nagorno-Karabakh. And with virtually no Armenians left in the region, their security is no longer an issue.

For most Armenians, it was, as Armenian political analyst Tigran Grigoryan put it, “the greatest catastrophe to befall our people since the genocide of the Ottoman Armenians in 1915.”

Armenia on Oct. 12 urged judges at the International Court of Justice in The Hague to impose interim orders on Azerbaijan to prevent the “ethnic cleansing” of the region from becoming irreversible. This is unlikely to succeed.