Analysis | Why Azerbaijan-Armenia Dispute Draws Big Powers In

1. What’s the root of the conflict?

Today’s Armenia and Azerbaijan are situated in an area that for centuries had fluid borders, with both suffering partition and brutality at the hands of the much larger Russian, Ottoman and Persian empires. The two communities began to fight each other as those empires collapsed toward the end of World War I and they sought to form independent states, with Russia backing Armenia and Ottoman Turkey supporting Azerbaijan in what amounted to a proxy war. Nagorno-Karabakh was a center of tension from the start, because the mountainous region hosted a mixed community of Armenians and Azeris and was seen by both nations as central to their national histories and identities.

2. What role did the breakup of the Soviet Union play?

After the Soviet Union took control of both nascent states in 1921, its leader Josef Stalin sowed the seeds for today’s dispute. He secured Nagorno-Karabakh for Azerbaijan but then in 1923 carved it out as an autonomous region, with borders that gave it a population that was more than 90% Armenian. The first violence of the current conflict broke out in 1988, as it became clear that the days of the Soviet empire, too, might be numbered. The two Soviet republics began to press for independence, giving new meaning to what had in essence been internal administrative borders. Nagorno-Karabakh’s national assembly voted to dissolve its autonomous status and join Armenia. Pogroms against ethnic Azeris in Armenia and against ethnic Armenians in Azerbaijan occurred. In all, more than 30,000 people were killed in the war in the early 1990s. More than 6,000 were killed in the 44-day war in 2020, and dozens died in September 2022.

3. How has Armenia’s history contributed to this?

Although the Armenian and Azeri communities of Karabakh lived together peacefully and were relatively well integrated until 1988, Armenia’s history in particular conspired to create a tinderbox of nationalist feeling. The 1915 genocide, in which the Ottoman regime killed as many as 1.5 million Armenians as it drove them from Anatolia, left deep scars. Fear of Turkey left Armenia feeling unusually dependent on Russia for military support after the Soviet collapse, and many Armenians came to see Azeris as proto-Turks, eliding the threats. In fact, the two are distinct. Azeris are Turkic speaking but they are mainly Shiite Muslims, whereas Turks are mainly Sunni.

4. Why is Turkey involved and what are its goals?

Turkey long had a closed border and no diplomatic relations with Armenia, in part due to the Karabakh conflict and in part due to wider tension over the 1915 genocide. (Since the 2020 war the two sides have sought to normalize ties and partially reopen their border.) By contrast, Azerbaijan supplies Turkey with natural gas and crude oil via pipelines that pass within 10 miles (16 kilometers) of the Azerbaijan-Armenia border and 30 miles of the broader conflict zone. As a result, Turkey has long sided with Azerbaijan on the Karabakh dispute. That support was until recently limited to rhetoric, but Turkey’s military backing, including F-16 fighter jets and drones, proved decisive in the 2020 conflict. The two countries signed a defense pact a year later and have held joint military drills. The changes came at a time when Erdogan was using hard power to press Turkish interests across much of the former Ottoman space, including against Russia in Syria and Libya, and against Cyprus, Greece and Israel in the eastern Mediterranean. Though Turkey wasn’t a signatory to the truce, the 2020 war represented a strategic triumph for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was able to muscle into Russia’s Caucasus backyard.  

5. What did the truce involve?

It restored Azerbaijan’s control of most of the territory it lost in the 1990s, while saying nothing about the final status of the disputed enclave. Russia, which has a military base in Armenia, sent nearly 2,000 peacekeeping troops to Nagorno-Karabakh. 

• The accord provided for Russian peacekeepers to police a road, known as the Lachin corridor, through which people could travel between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia. However, traffic on the route was blocked by a group of Azerbaijainis presenting themselves as environmental activists in December 2022, prompting warnings from the US and European Union about a humanitarian crisis. Azerbaijan claimed the Russian peacekeepers closed the road in response to the protests, while Armenia accused Azerbaijan of mounting a blockade against civilians in Nagorno-Karabakh.

• The truce brokered by Putin also is supposed to allow movement of people and vehicles across southern Armenian territory between Azerbaijan and its exclave of Naxcivan, which borders Armenia, Iran and Turkey, as part of a broader agreement between the two states to unblock all transport links. There’s been no progress on that as of early 2023.

A full peace agreement remains elusive, despite international efforts to promote talks.

6. What’s been Russia’s role?

As a nearby nuclear superpower and former overlord, Russia has leverage with both countries. It has a defense pact with Armenia, though it doesn’t cover Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia is now more dependent than ever on the ultimate guarantee that the Russian base provides. With Russia increasingly preoccupied with its war in Ukraine, that has left Armenia feeling vulnerable, as evidenced by Russia’s inaction regarding the blockade. Since 1994, Azerbaijan’s oil and gas wealth have allowed it to substantially increase its military spending — much of which has gone to purchasing weapons from Russia, which arms both sides. 

7. What about the US and France?

Russia, the US and France are members of the so-called Minsk Group of mediators that have been trying for decades to negotiate a settlement. The US used to wield considerable influence, as home to a large, wealthy and politically active Armenian diaspora and the primary backer of new Azeri oil and gas pipeline routes that skirt and compete with Russia’s transit network. While US interest in the region ebbed in recent years, the State Department has mediated peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan since the 2020 war, and it urged an end to hostilities and reopening of the Lachin corridor. French President Emmanuel Macron has expressed sympathy with Armenia, but his leverage with Azerbaijan appears limited. The European Union in mid-2022 signed a deal to double imports of natural gas from Azerbaijan as the bloc seeks to break Putin’s grip on its energy supplies amid the confrontation over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

8. What’s the energy situation?

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline has a capacity of 1.2 million barrels per day. It normally operates at only half that level, but supplies have increased since May, when BP shut oil exports via the Western Route Export Pipeline, also known as Baku-Supsa, and diverted them to the BTC. BP cited the unavailability of tankers on the Black Sea, where shipping was disrupted by Russia’s war in Ukraine. The South Caucasus Pipeline, the first leg of a chain of pipelines known as the Southern Gas Corridor that connects Azerbaijan with Europe via Georgia and Turkey, exported 14.4 billion cubic meters of natural gas in the first eight months of 2022, up 23% from a year earlier. European countries were the biggest buyers of Azerbaijani gas in the period with 7.3 billion cubic meters. Turkey bought 5.4 billion cubic meters and Georgia purchased 1.7 billion cubic meters. As Europe looks for sources to replace Russian gas, Azerbaijan plans a small increase of supplies to the continent in 2023 but a doubling of those exports to 20 billion cubic meters by 2027.

–With assistance from Zulfugar Agayev.

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