Türkiye tells Armenia to ’cease provocations’ against Azerbaijan

ANKARA

Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said he had discussed the “Armenian provocations” on the Azerbaijan-Armenia state border with the Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan Jeyhun Bayramov.

“Armenia should stop provoking now. They should focus on peace negotiations and cooperation within the framework of the reconciliation they have reached with Azerbaijan,” Çavuşoğlu tweeted on Sept. 13.

“We are always with Azerbaijan, dear Azerbaijan is never alone,” Çavuşoğlu said later in the day speaking at a meeting in Kastamonu province.

Armenia preferred provocations instead of turning the crisis into opportunities, the minister said. He stressed that Ankara supports the peace proposal of Azerbaijan.

Clashes erupted overnight along the volatile Azerbaijan-Armenia border near the occupied region of Nagorno-Karabakh, leaving troops dead on both sides, defense ministries in Baku and Yerevan said.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said 49 troops had died, making this the deadliest escalation since the two sides fought a six-week war over Nagorno-Karabakh that claimed more than 6,500 lives.

Türkiye backed Baku in the 2020 conflict, supplying it with combat drones that helped Azerbaijan claw back large parts of the territory in occupied Nagorno-Karabakh.

Azerbaijan’s defense ministry accused Armenia of “large-scale subversive acts” near the districts of Dashkesan, Kelbajar and Lachin on the border, adding that its army positions “came under fire, including from trench mortars.”

The United States called for an end to the conflict Monday night, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying the U.S. is “deeply concerned” over the situation.

“As we have long made clear, there can be no military solution to the conflict,” Blinken said in a statement. “We urge an end to any military hostilities immediately.”

Last week, Armenia accused Azerbaijan of killing one of its soldiers in a border shootout. In August, Azerbaijan said it had lost a soldier.

The neighbors fought two wars - in the 1990s and in 2020 - over the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region. Six weeks of fighting in the autumn of 2020 claimed more than 6,500 lives and ended with a ceasefire.

Under the deal, Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had occupied for decades, and Moscow deployed about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to oversee the fragile truce.

During EU-mediated talks in Brussels in May and April, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan agreed to “advance discussions” on a future peace treaty.