{"id":60852,"date":"2020-11-26T13:37:59","date_gmt":"2020-11-26T02:37:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=60852"},"modified":"2020-11-26T13:37:59","modified_gmt":"2020-11-26T02:37:59","slug":"war-between-armenia-and-azerbaijan-highlights-turkey-israel-tensions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/war-between-armenia-and-azerbaijan-highlights-turkey-israel-tensions\/","title":{"rendered":"War between Armenia and Azerbaijan highlights Turkey\u2013Israel tensions\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On 10 November, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan\u00a0informed<\/a>\u00a0Armenia that he was surrendering to end his country\u2019s war with Azerbaijan. That prompted massive protests which put \u00a0the future of the government and the surrender itself in doubt.\u00a0While the official\u00a0ceasefire terms<\/a>\u00a0announced by Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan do not mention Turkey and make provision only for Russian peacekeepers, it seems that Turkish soldiers will\u00a0take<\/a> part\u00a0in monitoring and\u00a0implementation<\/a>\u00a0of the deal alongside about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers as part of a separate agreement between Ankara and Moscow.<\/p>\n

The war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the latter backed heavily by both Turkey and Israel, is not merely a continuation of the conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.\u00a0Azerbaijan\u2019s President\u00a0Ilham Aliyev has\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0the conflict the \u2018Second Karabakh war\u2019. Yet this war was planned, organised, and is being overseen for the first time by Turkey, which has provided Azerbaijan with armed drones as well as a mercenary army of Syrians. These, alongside Israel\u2019s provision of sophisticated drones and missiles to Azerbaijan, have accounted for its remarkable military success.<\/p>\n

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has watched and learned from Russia and Iran over the past decade how to effectively employ proxies and mercenaries to rewrite regional orders and control conflicts at little political or financial cost and, after developing a powerful\u00a0drone capability<\/a>, the student became the master. Combining an endless supply of\u00a0Syrian mercenaries<\/a>\u00a0with a deadly drone armada and a small backbone of Turkish soldiers, Erdogan\u2019s new capabilities exploded onto the regional scene in 2020 by first\u00a0smashing<\/a>\u00a0the forces of the Assad regime and its backers in Syria and then those of warlord Khalifa Haftar and his allies in Libya.<\/p>\n

Erdogan\u2019s moves to co-opt Azerbaijan\u2019s conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory universally recognised as Azerbaijani despite Armenia\u2019s conquest of it in a war in the 1990s, are part of an apparent drive to involve Turkey in more and more conflicts, and to bypass international forums for dealing with conflicts. Erdogan\u2019s goal appears to be to divide up the region with Russia, and to a lesser extent Iran, as has happened in Syria and Libya.<\/p>\n

Ankara seems to be using each conflict as a bargaining chip in every other so that these strategic competitors can define spheres of influence, while undermining international and especially US influence, a goal that unites all three.<\/p>\n

Erdogan also wants to force Azerbaijan to choose between Turkey and Israel. In 2011, Turkish ambassador to Azerbaijan\u00a0Hulusi Kilic\u00a0reportedly said the country should \u2018reconsider\u2019 its relations with Israel and that it needed to\u00a0stand by Turkey<\/a>\u00a0in opposition to Israel. He also made vague threats about \u2018possible problems\u2019 with the oil pipeline used to supply Israel with Azerbaijani oil via Turkey. A retired US diplomat\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0Mark Perry in\u00a0Foreign Policy<\/em>\u00a0in 2012\u00a0that a massive arms deal between Israel and Azerbaijan in 2010 had Erdogan \u2018sputtering in rage\u2019.<\/p>\n

Turkey and Azerbaijan have extremely close historical and ethnic ties, and leaders from both sides\u00a0refer<\/a>\u00a0to their relationship as \u2019two states, one nation\u2019. Following\u00a0clashes with Armenia that erupted in July,\u00a0Erdogan\u00a0promised<\/a>\u00a0Azerbaijan all possible military assistance, a pledge\u00a0reiterated<\/a> in August. This was not simply rhetoric: Turkey\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0began recruiting Syrian mercenaries to invade Nagorno-Karabakh immediately after the flareup in July. It also\u00a0surged<\/a>\u00a0its supply of drones, ammunition, and other weapons to Azerbaijan in August, with sales increasing from less than US$300,000 to more than US$77 million by September.<\/p>\n

Finally, from 29 July to 10 August , Turkey and Azerbaijan held\u00a0massive military exercises<\/a>. This wasn\u2019t just signalling. According to Russian daily\u00a0Kommersant\u00a0,\u00a0<\/em>a group of 600 Turkish advisers stayed in Azerbaijan to\u00a0plan and oversee<\/a>\u00a0operations against Armenia, and Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar and ground forces commander General \u00dcmit D\u00fcndar arrived in Azerbaijan in late September to launch them.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s energy and military ties to Azerbaijan have long been close,\u00a0and one senior source at the Israeli Defence Ministry recently\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0Asia Times<\/em>,\u00a0<\/em>\u2019Azerbaijan would not be able to continue its operation at this intensity without our support.\u2019 Yet Israeli concerns about Turkish aggressiveness have been growing significantly in the past few years.<\/p>\n

Mossad chief Yossi Cohen\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0told\u00a0his counterparts in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE about two years ago that \u2018the real threat is from Turkey\u2019, and Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz recently\u00a0decried<\/a>\u00a0Turkey\u2019s destabilising actions across the region. Indeed, Turkey under Erdogan has been slowly severing its partnership with Israel in all areas outside of trade.<\/p>\n

Turkey now poses a range of challenges to Israel including its support for Hamas, its close relationship with Iran (despite strategic differences in Syria), its regional struggle for military and ideological supremacy with Gulf states, and its attempts to undermine Israel\u2019s gas deals with Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and others. To this list must now be added the Azerbaijan war.<\/p>\n

Israel has\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0been supplying Azerbaijan with sophisticated weaponry since the 1990s war with Armenia. Israel and the Aliyev regime established\u00a0comprehensive strategic relations<\/a>, particularly in the energy and security spheres, including the joint manufacture of sophisticated drones and sales of advanced weaponry. Israel is Azerbaijan\u2019s top\u00a0weapons supplier<\/a>, and Azerbaijan is one of Israel\u2019s\u00a0vital oil suppliers<\/a>\u00a0via the pipeline running through Turkey.<\/p>\n

Yaakov Amidror, a retired major general who spent more than 30 years in senior positions in the Israel Defense Forces and government, recently\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0an\u00a0Australia\/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council\u00a0webinar, \u2018Israel does not have any interest or idea who should control Nagorno-Karabakh, but Israel had and has and will continue to have in the future good relations with Azerbaijan\u2019. It was also one of the first and few Muslim countries to support Israel in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

Turkey\u2019s involvement in the latest Nagorno-Karabakh war was an extremely negative development for Israel, politically and because Turkey could now obtain and ultimately replicate Israel\u2019s most advanced weaponry. No matter how deeply embedded Israel is in Azerbaijan technologically, militarily and economically, Turkey\u2019s influence there will likely always be greater.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear that Azerbaijan can continue balancing the two now that Erdogan has apparently directly taken the reins of the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 10 November, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan\u00a0informed\u00a0Armenia that he was surrendering to end his country\u2019s war with Azerbaijan. That prompted massive protests which put \u00a0the future of the government and the surrender itself in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":968,"featured_media":60854,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[240,2875,747,2406],"class_list":["post-60852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-israel","tag-nagorno-karabakh","tag-turkey","tag-war"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWar between Armenia and Azerbaijan highlights Turkey\u2013Israel tensions\u00a0 | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/war-between-armenia-and-azerbaijan-highlights-turkey-israel-tensions\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"War between Armenia and Azerbaijan highlights Turkey\u2013Israel tensions\u00a0 | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On 10 November, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan\u00a0informed\u00a0Armenia that he was surrendering to end his country\u2019s war with Azerbaijan. 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