Azerbaijan's Karabakh war victory crucial for Turkic world's strengthening Remarks by Turkish professor

Azerbaijan's victory in the Second Karabakh War in 2020 has been crucial key for the entire Turkic world, said the Dean of the Military Faculty of the National Defence University of Türkiye, Professor Ibrahim Etem Atnur.

Speaking on October 22 at a conference dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Turkish Republic's establishment, Atnur said Ankara's relations with Baku are of special importance since the union of these two fraternal states has an extremely positive effect on the overall development of relations between the countries of the Turkic world.

“After the victory in Karabakh, last year the Trans-Caspian transport corridor Türkiye-Azerbaijan-Uzbekistan was created; another example is the expansion of cooperation between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan both in the transport sector and in gas exports. Of course, Türkiye's important support for Azerbaijan, both in military training and in other areas, caused a revival in the Turkic countries of Central Asia," Atnur noted, per Report.

He added that namely after Azerbaijan's victory in Karabakh the Turkic Council was transformed into a stronger alliance called the Organization of Turkic States.

"Now we are training students from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in Turkish military schools, and Uzbekistan is also showing initiative in this direction. In addition, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan have already begun to use Turkish-made weapons. All this, to some extent, raises our relations to the level of alliance,” Atnur concluded.

Armenia and Azerbaijan had long been at odds over the latter's Karabakh (Garabagh) region. Following the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991, Armenia launched full-blown military aggression against Azerbaijan, marking the longest and deadliest war in the South Caucasus region. The bloody war ended with a ceasefire in 1994 and saw Armenia forcibly occupying 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territories. Over 30,000 Azerbaijanis were killed, nearly 4,000 went missing, and one million were expelled from those lands in a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign conducted by Armenia.

Although the United Nations Security Council adopted four resolutions in 1993 demanding the immediate withdrawal of the occupying forces from Azerbaijani lands and the return of internally displaced Azerbaijanis to their ancestral lands, Armenia failed to comply with all four legally binding documents.

On September 27, 2020, the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict took a violent turn when Armenia’s forces deployed in occupied Azerbaijani lands shelled military positions and civilian settlements of Azerbaijan. During counter-attack operations, which lasted 44 days, Azerbaijani forces liberated over 300 settlements, including the cities of Jabrayil, Fuzuli, Zangilan, Gubadli, and Shusha, from a nearly 30-year-long illegal Armenian occupation. The war ended with the signing of a statement on November 10, 2020, under which Armenia also returned the occupied Aghdam, Kalbajar, and Lachin districts to Azerbaijan.