Ankara urges Yerevan ‘not to fall for provocations’

ANKARA

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has urged Armenia not to fall for the provocations from the third countries or from the Armenian diaspora, reiterating his call for peace and stability in the South Caucasus.

“We expect Armenia not to fall for such provocations originating from outside the country or from the diaspora. The path to the Armenian people’s peace, serenity and prosperity is through cooperation and peace with the neighbors, not through confrontation,” Erdoğan said following a weekly cabinet meeting late on Sept. 26.

“Türkiye has not, and will not, refrain from doing its part for a lasting peace in the region,” he said.

Erdoğan made these remarks following his one-day working visit to Nakhichevan autonomous region of Azerbaijan where he held talks with President Ilham Aliyev about the latest situation in the region following Baku’s anti-terror operation against the Armenian armed groups in Karabakh.

Erdoğan praised Azerbaijan’s successful military operation that was done with utmost care for the protection of the civilians in the region.

“The humanitarian stance our Azerbaijani brothers and sisters have displayed towards the Armenians in Karabakh despite all the oppression and massacres they have endured over the past 30 years is beyond any praise. All the necessary measures were taken to prevent any harm to civilians during the operation,” he said.

Recalling that Baku exerted extraordinary efforts for the delivery of humanitarian aid, Erdoğan stressed that the allegations raised by some countries feeding off the deadlock in the region for years are nothing but nonsense and slander.

On Türkiye’s intention to create a regional order based on peace and stability, Erdoğan said “We want to turn our region into a basin of peace and prosperity with projects that will include our neighbor Iran as well. We will manage this process without alienating or excluding anyone.”

He also repeated Ankara’s call for speedy realization of the Zengezur corridor for strengthening the transportation lines between Türkiye and Azerbaijan.

“Nakhichevan, which is our door that opens to Azerbaijan and Central Asia, is of strategic importance to us as well in terms of its geopolitical location. We consolidated this fact during our visit,” Erdoğan said. He explained that he and Aliyev broke the ground for the 80,150-meter-long Iğdır-Nakhichevan Natural Gas Pipeline which will have a daily transport capacity of 2 million cubic meters.

“Those befriending Türkiye win and those hostile to Türkiye lose. We seek to increase the number of our friends. Accordingly, starting from our near environ, we build our policies all around the world on peace, dialogue, winning together, equity, justice, morality and human being,” Erdoğan added.