'..even with the offer of full autonomy for Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan.''Armenia’s previous Government had consistently refused negotiation on the occupied Azerbaijani territories, even with the offer of full autonomy for Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan. It is significant that although Armenia maintains land-bridge linkage with NK via the Lachin Corridor, it does not recognize the claimed sovereignty of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Indeed, while Armenia might have been prepared to negotiate the sovereignty of NK, the population of the enclave was not. Increasingly, however, since 1991, Armenians have come to the belief that they must support the enclave, although there has been no movement away from its status as the core of a frozen conflict, caused by the Stalinist movement of peoples into an area.
Western media has painted the dispute as between “Christian Armenia” and “Muslim Azerbaijan”, thus begging the question as to why Azerbaijan is so tightly linked with Israel. Azerbaijan is, in fact, multi-confessional, is the home to a large, discreet Jewish population, favored by the President, and is also the source of the ancient Zoroastrian religion of Persia. Ankara might wish to portray the conflict in religious terms; Baku would not.
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The question that remained, though, was whether this was to be a serious offensive to regain territory, or merely to bolster Azerbaijan against Armenia’s surprise brief offensive in July 2020. The July skirmish clearly rattled the Azerbaijani leadership to the point that Pres. Aliyev replaced his Foreign Minister and may have triggered Ankara to offer forces to support an Azerbaijani restoration of credible deterrence. But Turkey had been building its proxy (Syrian jihadist) forces in Azerbaijan for some time, so Ankara had some concept that it would utilize those forces against either Armenia, Russia, or Iran, perhaps as a staging operation against the Kurds of the region.'
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What’s Behind The Azerbaijan-Armenia Conflict?, October 14, 2020
Context'..Positive Peace as a holistic, systemic framework.'