A devastating war may start soon, causing death and ethnic cleansing. Azerbaijan may invade Armenia, after previously driving 120,000 Armenians from their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh in what has been described as cultural genocide. Newspapers in Turkey and Azerbaijan are beating the drums for an invasion of Armenia that could kill tens of thousands of people and drive hundreds of thousands of others from their homes.
As a Turkish-born journalist notes,
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that in the coming weeks Azerbaijan could invade Armenia. That’s what Azeri President Aliyev and Turkish President Erdogan have also said for months. Pro-Erdogan media outlets in Turkey are playing the war drums against Armenians. The headline news in the pro-Erdogan newspaper “Turkiye” on October 3 refers to Armenians in Armenia’s Syunik (Zangezur) Province as “snakes”, “gangs”, and “terrorists” who are receiving military training in “terror camps”. The headline reads: “The new nest of the snake is Zangezur.” When the Turkish media uses such words, its intent is to prepare the public for an upcoming war against an “enemy.” Two weeks ago, Azerbaijan and Turkey completed their genocide against the Armenian Republic of Artsakh. Around 120,000 Armenians have been forcibly displaced after experiencing numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity. The US government knows that the Azeri-Turkish next step is attacking the Republic of Armenia.
So will the US finally sanction the government of Azerbaijan? Will it cut US military aid to Azerbaijan? Or will it once again watch as Turkey and Azerbaijan massacre more Armenians and invade more Armenian lands?
Politico reports:
Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned a small group of lawmakers last week … that Azerbaijan could soon invade Armenia…The call indicates the depth of concern in the administration about Azerbaijan’s operations against a breakaway region in the west of the country and the possibility of the conflict spreading.
Azerbaijiani President Ilham Aliyev has previously called on Armenia to open a “corridor” along its southern border, linking mainland Azerbaijan to an exclave that borders Turkey and Iran. Aliyev has threatened to solve the issue “by force.”
[Congressman] Pallone has said publicly that he’s worried Azerbaijan could invade soon. “Aliyev is moving forward with his objective to take Southern Armenia,” Pallone tweeted Wednesday, arguing that “his regime is emboldened after facing little consequences” for invading Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijan’s military incursion into that region last month prompted more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians living in the Nagorno-Karabakh to flee. Local leaders capitulated as part of a Russia-brokered surrender and agreed to dissolve their three-decades-old unrecognized state. Azerbaijani forces have since detained more than a dozen ex-leaders.
In a Sept. 20 statement, Blinken said he was “deeply concerned by Azerbaijan’s military actions” and declared that “the use of force to resolve disputes is unacceptable.”
But Nagorno-Karabakh is not the only territorial dispute between the two Caucasus countries. Baku has proposed a route to the Nakhichevan exclave that would cut through Armenia’s southern Syunik region, known in Azerbaijani as Zangezur, and enable road traffic to bypass Iran.
Aliyev has said “we will be implementing the Zangezur Corridor, whether Armenia wants it or not.”…
There have long been tensions at the border: In September 2022, Azerbaijan launched an assault across the border to capture strategic high ground in the east and south of Armenia. More recently, on Sept. 1 of this year, three Armenian servicemen were killed after Azerbaijan launched “retaliatory measures” in response to an alleged drone attack.
During World War I, over a million Armenians were exterminated by the Ottoman Turks. After World War I, Armenia briefly became an independent nation, but a famine right after the war killed up to one-fifth of all the people in Armenia. Then, the Soviet Union took over Armenia, and controlled it for 70 years until it once again became independent.
In 2020, Azerbaijan defeated Armenia in a border war. Azerbaijan has many more people than Armenia, as well as oil wealth that Armenia lacks, so its military is much more powerful. Azerbaijan’s assault on Armenia was aided by drones purchased from countries like Turkey.
