The true reasons for the next visit by Erdogan to Azerbaijan
n December 9, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit the Azerbaijani capital of Baku, the Turkish presidency reported on Thursday. In the conflict with Armenian-backed separatists in the Nagorno Karabakh region, Ankara was Azerbaijan’s first supporter.
The two-day visit of Erdogan to Azerbaijan would be the first for a foreign head of state since the ceasefire that ended several weeks of fighting in early November and sealed the region’s gains from Baku. In another sense, Azerbaijan today announced the loss of 2,783 of its soldiers in the fighting. That is Baku’s first comment on its military wounds. In the past, it merely applied to the number of civilian Azerbaijani casualties as a result of the war.
According to Daily Sabah, a news outlet loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is pro-Erdogan propaganda, the Turkish president will be attending next week’s victory celebrations with his Azerbaijani counterpart.
In fact, the reasons for Erdogan’s visit are not limited to celebrating the brave soldiers of Azerbaijan, but there will be long, much more interesting bilateral meetings waiting for him. He will be in Baku on Dec. 10 to attend the military parade to mark Azerbaijan’s victory in liberating the “occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region.” First, Erdogan will address, from an economic point of view, how the small country can compensate him for the aid given.
The second is the formalisation of sending its own forces and hiring Syrian mercenaries by means of a possible military deal, such as that signed with Libya, which would have to withdraw from the North African country within a period of three months. Although many are returning to Syria, the agreements with Russia provide for the continued occupation of Ankara by these Syrian mercenaries in order to allow President Bashar al-Assad to re-establish his control over the entire Syrian territory.
To do this with propaganda videos and other nonsense portraying the new “sultan” as Mohammed II, protector of the Muslims, as well as the new conqueror who would restore the Ottoman Empire, Erdogan and his officers filled the heads of these thousands of young Syrians.
On 10 November, when a peace deal brokered by Russia was signed to work towards a substantive settlement, Turkey agreed with Russia that its troops would also be watching the cease-fire. On Tuesday, Erdogan and Putin reached an agreement to create, as soon as possible, a joint observation centre in Nagorno-Karabakh. The cease-fire is seen as a success for Azerbaijan and a defeat for Armenia, whose armed forces have withdrawn under the peace agreement.
