Erdogan says Turkey and Azerbaijan will "build a new Karabakh"

16 June 2021


Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he is ready to fully restore Karabakh together with Azerbaijan. He made this statement on Wednesday in the Azerbaijani parliament, which was broadcast by the TRT television channel.


"We drove through Karabakh yesterday, we saw the destruction there after 30 years of conflict. But Turkey and Azerbaijan together will rebuild everything, build a new Karabakh," he said.


Erdogan has been on an official visit to Azerbaijan since June 15, he held talks with President Ilham Aliyev and inspected several facilities in Shusha, which came under Baku's control after the fighting in the fall of 2020. The two leaders signed the Shusha Declaration of Allied Relations on Tuesday, under which, among other things, they agreed to hold regular joint meetings of the two countries' Security Councils and also agreed to coordinate their armed forces and help each other if security or sovereignty were threatened.


Part of the areas around Nagorno-Karabakh came under Baku's control under the terms of the trilateral statement of the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia on November 9, 2020, which ended the hostilities in the conflict zone that began on September 27, 2020. According to the document, the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides stopped at the occupied positions, a number of areas came under Baku's control, and Russian peacekeepers were deployed along the line of contact and the Lachin corridor.


Baku and Yerevan have disputed Nagorno-Karabakh's ownership since February 1988, when the region seceded from the Azerbaijan SSR. During the 1992-1994 armed conflict, Azerbaijan lost control of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts.

 

 

GSV "Russia - Islamic World"

Photo: official website of the President of the Russian Federation

Based on materials from TASS