Rising Armenia-Azerbaijan tensions pose big questions of EU - The Irish Times

13:01 • 08.10.20
Event

By Naomi O’Leary

As a group of office workers in the Brussels bubble prepared to wind down for the weekend last Friday, an email appeared in their inboxes that made them sit up. It was a note from a colleague announcing he was taking a leave of absence to go to war. 

His native Armenia had declared martial law and universal military mobilisation of able citizens aged over 18. He had been summoned to serve his nation, he wrote, “and I proudly take it as an honour”.

This jolt to the heart of Brussels sums up how the burgeoning conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan has implications that reach across Europe.

This is because the dispute – though it centres on a remote region with the unfamiliar name of Nagorno-Karabakh – involves the interests of a knot of large military powers that are already set against each other in theatres of conflict elsewhere.

The conflict has its roots in the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, when the ethnic Armenian majority in Nagorno-Karabakh began agitating to become part of Armenia or be independent, despite the territory coming to be internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan.

The ensuing war killed tens of thousands. Sporadic clashes between the two neighbours have continued since a peace deal was reached in 1994, with Moscow maintaining regional dominance and selling weapons to both sides.

NATO member Turkey has an interest too, sharing close ethnic ties with Azerbaijan, as well as mutual antipathy towards Armenia. This week Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavusoglu travelled to the capital, Baku, to express solidarity with Azerbaijan as it sounded a martial note

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