Azerbaijan’s FM to meet with Turkey’s Fidan in Ankara as Putin courts Baku

Azerbaijan’s foreign minister, Jeyhun Bayramov, is set to arrive in Ankara Tuesday following an invitation from his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, amid burgeoning tensions between the Turkic allies.

Turkish and Azerbaijani media reported that the pair are expected to discuss peace talks between Azerbaijan and its historic foe, Armenia, as well as normalization talks between Ankara and Yerevan. They will additionally address regional issues, notably the conflict in Gaza.

Turkey and Azerbaijan enjoy deep strategic ties, which saw the former help the latter prevail in its 2020 war against Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region that it had lost to Armenian forces in a previous war. But relations began to wobble when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in late July let it slip that Turkey had intervened in the latest Karabakh conflict. He made the comment as he threatened to send troops to Gaza to defend Palestinians against Israel. Erdogan told a gathering of his ruling Justice and Development (AKP) Party that “Turkey must be strong so that Israel can’t do these ridiculous things to Palestine.”

“Just as we entered Karabakh, just as we entered Libya, we will do something [similar] exactly to [Israel],” Erdogan said. Turkey has denied formal involvement in the Nagorno-Karabakh war that saw Armenia lose all the Azerbaijani territories that it had occupied in the early 1990s. However, it is an open secret that Turkish drones and military advisers, together with massive inflows of weapons from Israel, played an instrumental part in Azerbaijan’s victory, as did Russia’s decision to do nothing to aid Armenia. Turkey’s intervention in Libya in 2020 in support of the internationally recognized government in Tripoli helped tip the balance against eastern warlord Khalifa Haftar.