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Soriek  6mo ago (text post)   950 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 23

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum might be interested in. I’m increasingly doing more coverage of countries we’re likely to have a userbase living in, or just that I think our userbase would be more interested in. This does mean going a little outside of my comfort zone and I’ll probably make mistakes, so chime in where you see any. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Azerbaijan

Time Magazine ran an article Tuesday warning that Azerbaijan may continue with their conquest of Nagorno-Karabakh and actually mount a joint invasion of Armenia, supposedly with the goal of connecting their country fully to their close ally Turkey.

The most evident signs of an impending invasion are the joint Turkish-Azerbaijani military exercises taking place on October 23-25 in Nagorno-Karabakh, to Armenia’s east, and Nakhichevan, another formerly Armenian-populated region to Armenia’s west, with the conspicuous arrival of Turkish F-16 fighter jets in Azerbaijan. Last time such a massive exercise took place, in 2020, it preceded the 44-day war against Armenia-backed Nagorno-Karabakh, preparing ground for last month’s “final solution.”

Another sign of an impending invasion is the reported appearance of “!” on Azerbaijan’s military trucks headed toward Armenia. The symbol roughly resembles a severed Armenia and ostensibly serves as the conclusion of the 2020-2023 “Karabakh is Azerbaijan!” war slogan…

Armenia is the lowest hanging fruit for Turkey's leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is desperate for a show of power. Oct. 29 marks an important milestone for the country—the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Turkish Republic—with no significant planned celebrations…A successful invasion of Armenia would realize the Armenian Genocide-era goal of connecting Azerbaijan and Turkey continuously—something that even Atatürk couldn’t accomplish.

Breathless speculation? It seems a little excessive and reading too much into things to me, but they did just conduct an expansionist invasion a couple weeks ago so it’s not that outlandish I suppose. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has also warned of an invasion into Armenia.

On the other hand, while the world already recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan and, I guess, just didn’t give enough of a shit about the situation to care that the entire place got ethnically cleansed, invading a sovereign nation would be quite an escalation. Also worth noting this is a sovereign nation that has been balancing more towards the United States and has even been conducting joint military drills together. On the other, other hand, America didn’t do anything about Artsakh and is too dysfunctional right now to approve aid for their actual priority countries in Ukraine and Israel, so (if the speculation is true) maybe they’re wagering America is too tied up to care or do much at the moment.

Technically speaking, artsakh didn’t get ethnically cleansed because the Armenians did the smart thing and left on their own before Azerbaijan ethnically cleansed them. Yes, they did this because Azerbaijan didn’t bother to pretend it wasn’t going to do that, but there’s no international law against claiming you’re going to ethnically cleanse people.

Repeatedly and credibly threatening to do bad things to specific ethnicity, and having history of doing bad things to specific ethnicity also counts. You do not get bonus for other side not being dumb and able to predict obvious events.

More interesting is that Armenia expelled Azeris relatively recently, with other rounds of the same stuff.

More interesting is that Armenia expelled Azeris relatively recently, with other rounds of the same stuff.

Yeah it does give the events a very different flavor, not that it justifies what’s happening in the present day.

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