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...The Turkish foreign ministry called on both parties to "exercise common sense and refrain from unilateral actions."They added, "We expect that measures will be taken to reduce tensions in the region as soon as possible and that the necessary mechanisms, including in the field of counter-terrorism, will be put in place to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents. We also support Pakistan's call for an investigation into the 22 April terrorist attack."...Azerbaijan also issued a statement soon after the attack, condemning violence against Pakistan.In their statement they said, "The Republic of Azerbaijan expresses its concern over the further escalation of...

Call it the dark side of liberation. America’s most loyal allies in Syria, the Kurds, are now facing the wrath of Turkish proxies that helped topple Bashar al-Assad’s tyranny earlier this month. As of now neither President Joe Biden nor president-elect Donald Trump have offered any guarantees for the survival of the 200,000 Kurds who are now at risk of being cleansed from the northeastern city of Kobani and surrounding areas. “We feel betrayed,” Ilham Ahmed, a Kurd who serves as the de facto foreign minister for the North and East Syrian administration, told The Free Press in an interview...

Israeli Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli called for the internartional coomunity to grant and recognize the independence of Kurdistan as Kurdish regions in northern Syria face attacks from Turkey and Turkish-backed rebel groups. "Kurdistan must be granted independence, while Erdoğan should be expelled from NATO and left to crown himself as the caliph of an Islamic state, ruling alongside his friends in ISIS and Al-Qaeda," Chikli wrote on X. Chikli's comments were made in response to an interview given by a Kurdish journalist in Syria with Israel's Kan News channel. .....

Syrian Kurdish commanders seek Israel's help amid territorial losses to Turkish-backed Islamist forces. The assessment is that intervention would escalate tensions with Turkey. ===================================================================== The Israeli defense establishment is weighing requests for assistance from Syria's Kurdish minority, who are under attack from Turkish-backed Islamist groups. The appeals for help have reached Israeli officials in recent days following the advancement of these groups and their successful capture of Kurdish-held territories. Israel and the Kurdish forces have maintained an ongoing dialogue, which has strengthened significantly following the fall of the Assad regime. The Israeli dilemma stems partly from the potential impact such...

“I smell cigarette smoke,” one of my travel companions noted. That was the moment I knew that we should not linger any longer. We had been warned twice on the way up the hillside not to come here. In one instance, it was claimed that two treasure hunters had been arrested by the police a week or two earlier. In the other case, we were told that if the military or police caught us there, we would be arrested. Such is the experience of interrupting the destruction of Armenian cultural sites in Turkey. There are few photographs of the monastery...

ANKARA (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that Turkey might enter Israel as it had done in the past in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, though he did not spell out what sort of intervention he was suggesting.Erdogan, who has been a fierce critic of Israel's offensive in Gaza, started discussing that war during a speech praising his country's defence industry."We must be very strong so that Israel can't do these ridiculous things to Palestine. Just like we entered Karabakh, just like we entered Libya, we might do similar to them," Erdogan told a meeting of his ruling AK Party...

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — The leader of Armenia on Wednesday declared his intention to pull out of a Russia-dominated security alliance of several ex-Soviet nations as tensions rise between the two allies. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said his government will decide later when to leave the Collective Security Treaty Organization, or CSTO, a grouping that includes Russia and the former Soviet Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Amid the widening rift with Russia, Armenia earlier froze its participation in the alliance, canceled its involvement in joint military drills and snubbed CSTO summits. Pashinyan said Wednesday for the...

A Russian-dominated security grouping held a summit in Belarus on Thursday with the absence of one of its members, Armenia, which has been irked by what it sees as a lack of support over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Speaking at the meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, CSTO, Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed what he called the group’s role in securing peace and stability in the region. But in a sign of the widening rift between Russia and Armenia, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan snubbed the summit in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, citing his government’s dissatisfaction with the organization....

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on October 13 that in the coming weeks, Azerbaijan could invade Armenia. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has threatened Armenia with war multiple times.Meanwhile, pro-Erdogan media outlets in Turkey are also playing their war drums against Armenians. The headline news in the pro-Erdogan newspaper Türkiye on October 3 refers to Armenians in Armenia’s Syunik (Zangezur) province as “snakes”, “gangs” and “terrorists”. One headline reads: “The new nest of the snake is Zangezur”. It claims that the Armenians displaced from Artsakh (also known as Nagorno-Karabakh) are receiving military training in “terror camps in Zangezur”.When the...

The fighting prompted over 100,000 people — more than 80% of the enclave's ethnic Armenian residents — to flee in the last two weeks.

The leader of Armenia on Tuesday (Dec 27) questioned the role of Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh as he discussed a blockade of the breakaway region with President Vladimir Putin. Since mid-December Azerbaijani activists have been blocking the Lachin corridor, the only land link between Armenia and Karabakh, to protest what they claim is illegal mining. As a result of the blockade, the mountainous region of some 120,000 people is running short of food, medicines and fuel. SNIP As part of the deal, Moscow has stationed peacekeepers in Karabakh. Since the start of the blockade Armenia has repeatedly accused Russian peacekeepers...

On 24 April 1915, approximately 250 leading intellectuals of Constantinople’s Armenian community (including political leaders, journalists, and religious leaders) were arrested by Turkish officials. They were then slain. This event marked the beginning of the 1915 Armenian genocide. By 1923, Turkish deportation and annihilation policies resulted in the deaths of approximately 1.5 million Armenian men, women, and children in jihad genocide during which Armenians and other Christians were targeted mainly for their religion. 108 years later, Azerbaijan and its ally Turkey have committed the same crime against the Armenians in the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). Since 2020, around 120,000 Armenians...

On Sept. 19, Azerbaijan launched an assault to recapture separatist region Nagorno-Karabakh. The reintegration of Nagorno-Karabakh into Azerbaijan has prompted tens of thousands of Armenians to flee. Azerbaijan’s campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh has been quietly fueled by Israel’s powerful weapons. Israel has quietly helped fuel Azerbaijan’s campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, supplying powerful weapons to Azerbaijan ahead of its lightening offensive last month that brought the ethnic Armenian enclave back under its control, officials and experts say.

<p>Baku has promised to guarantee the safety of residents, but Armenia's prime minister warned of "ethnic cleansing".</p><p>Armenian authorities said on Wednesday they have received 42,500 refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh, following Azerbaijan's lightning offensive last week.</p><p>That's more than a third of the separatist Caucasus region's total population.</p>

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — At least 20 people were killed and nearly 300 others were injured in an explosion at a crowded gas station in Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh region as thousands of ethnic Armenians rushed to flee into neighboring Armenia, the separatist territory's authorities said Tuesday. Some 19,000 people — about 16% of the region's population — have fled across the border since Azerbaijan defeated separatists who have governed the breakaway region for about 30 years in a swift military operation last week, according to Armenian's Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Khachatryan. Residents of Nagorno-Karabakh scrambled to flee as soon as Azerbaijan...

Update from Ukraine | South frontline success | Azerbaijan Armenia Conflict. Ukraine Poland tensions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW4Cm7IL0lM The summary of the situation of Russian re-invasion to Ukraine covering the recent developments on the battlefield, as of 13th September 2023 – 22:00 (Kyiv time). [NOTE: two summaries per week, released on Wednesday and Sunday] https://militaryland.net/news/invasion-day-567-summary/ *** Great interactive maps with viewer controlled Map magnification tool to use for each Front! https://militaryland.net/maps/

Thousands of people have fled from a disputed Azerbaijani territory to neighbouring Armenia amid fears that they may face ethnic cleansing. Nearly 6,700 people arrived in Armenia after leaving the Nagorno-Karabakh region, internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, in the two days since the Armenian government began accepting refugees on Sunday. Armenia's prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, said that the country has plans to look after up to 40,000 refugees, but said he expects up to 120,000 people to leave the region due to the 'danger of ethnic cleansing', raising serious concerns over whether Armenia will be able to cope with...

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) expressed frustration Thursday with the Biden administration's lack of urgency in addressing what the United States has described as a "rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation" in Nagorno-Karabakh, a hotly disputed region at the center of rising tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan.Menendez, while chairing of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the crisis, said he was "amazed" by the responses from Yuri Kim, the acting assistant secretary for the State Department's Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs...The senator's frustration centered on the administration's application of Section 907 of the United States Freedom Support Act, which bans direct...

‘People feel let down by Russia’: disputed Caucasus enclave choked by blockade: Warnings of humanitarian catastrophe in mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh, a region claimed by Armenia and Azerbaijan, now Russia is no longer capable of intervening Armenia sent a convoy of 19 trucks carrying humanitarian aid for the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh last month. But the convoy was stopped at an Azeri checkpoint and has remained there for more than two weeks. Nina, a 23-year-old village schoolteacher, goes from store to store every morning searching for food in the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, where she and her parents have been trapped for...

He may want a Nobel Peace Prize, as might Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan or even Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. It is unlikely, but should the Norwegian Nobel Committee oblige, the Blinken prize would herald a humanitarian disaster, as did the Nobel Committee's award to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in 2019.The problems with Blinken's peace plan are huge.Democracies should not bully fellow democrats into conceding to terror in the face of aggression. Nor should the State Department dismantle democracies and force their submission to dictatorship. Most alarming, Blinken actively ignores Aliyev's abuses, even as Aliyev incites genocide and denies...