Posted on 10/01/2020 11:30:41 AM PDT by RomanSoldier19
A man walks by a house that was damaged during clashes in the Tartar district bordering the Nagorno-Karabakh region, on Sept. 29, 2020. Credit - Tofik Babayev—Xinhua/Getty Images
Intense fighting has erupted in Nagorno-Karabakh, a small enclave in the southern Caucasus mountains, setting the entire region on edge. This is a fight primarily between Armenia and Azerbaijan, two former Soviet republics with long-held grievances over land, but the involvement of Russia, Turkey, and others raises the stakes for where a war might be headed.
In essence, this is a story of a powerful outsider changing history by drawing arbitrary lines on a map that would later spark conflict. The states of Armenia and Azerbaijan were pulled into Moscow’s orbit and became part of the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Though Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountain region about the size of Delaware, was dominated by Armenians, Soviet mapmakers made it part of the Azerbaijani Soviet Republic. For decades, Armenian complaints about the region’s status were ignored, and in the final days of the U.S.S.R., war erupted. Tens of thousands were killed, and more than one million were forced from their homes.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Is this engineered by Erdogan?
Thank God we have a President who doesn’t want to send troops to yet another unwinnable quagmire. Russia and Turkey deserve each other. Let them sort themselves out.
One thing that might help calm things would be to throw Turkey out of NATO. The Turks feel they can rely on NATO if they are “attacked”. As the article said, nobody knows who fired the first shot. We need to make it ckear Putin has a free hand. Turkey will stop provoking trouble.
Sounds like, at the very least, he is egging it on.
Its Muslims against Christians. I wonder which side Obama would have been encouraging. I'd guess the Muslim side.
Let’s do that AFTER we pull our folks out of Turkey.
I hate saying this, but I doubt that Putin will abandon the Christians in favor of Muslims. Obama would do the opposite. Yet, Putin is supposed to be evil. We live in an insane world.
“The Turks feel they can rely on NATO if they are “attacked”.
They would be mistaken.
Russia and the US are on the same side in this one.
Erdogan is provoking Armenia, safe in the knowledge that if Russia (who is in a NATO-like alliance with Armenia) returns fire that he can immediately condemn "Putin's aggression" and the entire Western world will fall in line.
What really needs to happen here is Russia and Armenia should be carpet-bombing the Azeris until they cry "Uncle".
I confess that I might be biased by having an Armenian wife (who was driven out of Azerbaijan as a child) and three half-Armenian children.
Definitely time to downgrade the relationship with Turkey, get out of Incerkik and throw some weight behind the Kurds.
One of the reasons that the USA has been historically hands-off with the Kurds is the fact that many of them are organized under the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Communist party. Now, this had a lot to do with Soviet politics, and I doubt they have any aspirations of creating a modern Communist Kurdistan, so it might be time to take another look.
Other than the US, the rest of NATO is an empty suit and won’t be helping anyone do anything even if it was justified. Second, Europe won’t help Turkey if they get in to a war. Europeans would not even defend Europe if it was attacked. Third, nothing in that region is of interest to the US - not our circus, not our monkeys.
Let Russia handle this one, it will be good for them.
Armenians have been subjected to at least 500 years of oppression by Turks. Slavery, abuse, taxation, killings, genocide. Then Stalin, just by his whim, took part of Armenia and gave it to Azerbaijan. He did that quite often in many other areas, just to divide the people. BTW Azeri are Turkic people.
No wonder that Armenians are up to arms. They do not want another genocide/being forced from their homeland as it happened to them so many times before. Russia supports fellow orthodox Christians.
Nagorno Karabakh is like Kosovo, area of one country populated by people who do not want to be part of that country. We should clearly support them. I hope State department is doing some negotiating.
Armenia, largely Christian, is backed by Russia and Iran, Greek mercenaries, and very distantly, the US. Their military arms are largely Russian.
.........
Azerbaijan, largely Muslim is heavily backed by Turkey (a NATO partner to the US), and Syrian-Turkic mercenaries. Their military arms are largely Western and US and Israeli.
........
Turkey has now taken over the air war command and control, for Azerbaijan.
........
They are fighting over control of a disputed area between Armenia and Azerbaijan that is about 80% ethnic Armenian.
The back story is that this is Turkey’s continuation of their genocidal extermination of the Armenians who took the side of Russia in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878.
.........
Armenia and Turkey are continuing ancient hatreds with state of the art drone warfare.
Well hell.
Sounds like the EU needs to start mobilizing its forces to deal with this, then.
The Armenian ambassador to Israel has been recalled in protest over Israel supplying drones to Azerbaijan.
..........
So, we have a Jewish country supplying arms to a Sunni Muslim country to attack a Christian country that is backed by Shia Muslim and Christian countries.
.......
And I thought Syria was complicated.
Most Armenians used to live in the area of today’s Turkey. That was their ancient homeland. Only small portion of Armenia was taken over by Russians in 19th century.
There are basically No Armenians in Turkey now! Either killed or in emigration, few in hiding. The remaining Armenian Armenians (I believe most Armenians are actually in emigration.) live in the formerly Russian Armenia. They will Not share the fate of their brethren.
The post title: “Could Spiral Into A Larger Regional Conflict” couldn’t be more accurate. But the article doesn’t even come close to the size of this fight.
........
The only thing missing is the Kurds..... Shhhh! Maybe they are too busy, don’t say anything.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.