Erdogan Blames Armenia for Border War With Azerbaijan

ANKARA — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday voiced full support for Azerbaijan’s military operations on the border with Armenia and blamed Yerevan for them.

“The whole world must know that in this situation we stand with Azerbaijan,” said Erdogan. “Armenia is not complying with terms of the agreement signed after the [2020] Karabakh war and is constantly taking an aggressive stance. Undoubtedly, such behavior will have consequences for the Armenian side.”

Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan insisted, meanwhile, that the hostilities constitute Azerbaijan military aggression against Armenia. He said Baku is trying to force Yerevan to fully accept its terms of a bilateral peace treaty and cede Armenian territory for an “exterritorial corridor” connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave.

Meeting with Yerevan-based foreign diplomats, Mirzoyan also blamed Turkey for the hostilities that broke out on Monday night.

“We were periodically receiving information about planes carrying out military shipments from Turkey to Azerbaijan,” he said. He also pointed to joint Turkish-Azerbaijani military exercises held on September 5-9.

Turkey provided significant and decisive military assistance to Azerbaijan during the 2020 war.

Reuters news agency quoted an unnamed Turkish official as saying that the Armenian-Azerbaijani border clashes will be on the agenda of Erdogan’s upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two leaders are scheduled to hold talks in Uzbekistan on Saturday on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavusoglu said he had discussed the “Armenian provocations” on the Azerbaijan-Armenia state border with the Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan Jeyhun Bayramov.

“Armenia should stop provoking now. They should focus on peace negotiations and cooperation within the framework of the reconciliation they have reached with Azerbaijan,” Çavusoglu tweeted on Sept. 13.

“We are always with Azerbaijan, dear Azerbaijan is never alone,” Çavusoglu said later in the day speaking at a meeting in Kastamonu province.