Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to visit Azerbaijan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will today meet with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev in Baku.

The visit comes after the conclusion of a near six-week war over a historical land dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh. In early November, Azerbaijan retook a number of territories formerly controlled by Armenia with the military backing of Ankara, which has a strained relationship with Yerevan that draws back to the mass killings of Armenians in the late Ottoman era.

Expect today’s talks to focus on the latest Moscow-brokered ceasefire deal, which has blocked Turkey’s aspirations of deploying its own peacekeeping forces to Nagorno-Karabakh. Instead, Ankara will monitor the ceasefire through a joint Turkish-Russian Centre. While previous ceasefires have collapsed, the recent peace deal appears to be enduring. The ceasefire could be viewed as a geopolitical win for Russia, which could undermine Ankara’s growing regional influence. Therefore, Turkey aims to consolidate its status as a regional power by having a stake in a future political settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Turkey’s attempt to directly interfere in the conflict will put its special relationship with Russia to test. Whether the two countries’ joint monitoring will result in a genuine peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan remains to be seen.