Erdogan meeting Azerbaijan’s Aliyev as thousands flee Nagorno-Karabakh

Turkish president will visit Azerbaijan’s autonomous Nakhchivan exclave in a show of solidarity with his ally.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has arrived for a meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev as thousands of ethnic Armenians flee Nagorno-Karabakh after Baku defeated the breakaway region’s fighters in a military operation last week.

Erdogan is visiting Azerbaijan’s autonomous Nakhchivan exclave on Monday is to discuss the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, according to the Turkish president’s office.

State media said Erdogan, who will hold a meeting and a press conference with Aliyev, will also attend a groundbreaking and an opening ceremony in the region.

Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory that is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but has an ethnic Armenian majority, were forced into a ceasefire last week after a 24-hour military operation by the much larger Azerbaijani military.

The majority of Karabakh Armenians do not accept Azerbaijan’s promises to guarantee their rights.

Valery Airapetyan, a Nagorno-Karabakh resident who spoke to Al Jazeera, is one of them. He is leaving the region for Armenia.

“We found a litre of gasoline, ran away and came here,” he said in the middle of his journey out of Nagorno-Karabakh.

As of 5am (01:00 GMT) on Monday, more than 2,900 people had crossed into Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian government said in a statement.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Sunday that he expected about 120,000 civilians to leave the region for Armenia due to “the danger of ethnic cleansing”.

Armenia has called on the United Nations to set up a mission to monitor human rights and security in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Decades of fighting

Nagorno-Karabakh is located in a region that has come under the control of Persians, Turks, Russians, Ottomans and Soviets over centuries.

After the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917, it was claimed by both Azerbaijan and Armenia. It was designated an autonomous region within Azerbaijan before the Soviet Union collapsed.

After the fall of the USSR, the region’s Armenians overthrew Azerbaijani control in the First Karabakh War from 1988 to 1994, which killed tens of thousands of people.

Azerbaijan gained back swathes of territory in and around Nagorno-Karabakh in a 2020 war, in which Ankara gave military support to Baku.

Erdogan last week expressed his support for Azerbaijan’s latest military operation, which it launched on Tuesday.

According to Yerevan, more than 200 people were killed and 400 wounded in last week’s operation, which was slammed by Western countries.

Pashinyan has blamed Russia for failing Armenia. He is facing protests and calls for his resignation for failing ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.