Azerbaijan agreed to Russia’s military presence in its territory (if we take into consideration the fact that Azerbaijan considers Nagorno-Karabakh a part of Azerbaijan). In addition, Baku agreed to the establishment of Turkish military bases in not only Nakhchivan, but also Ganja. This is what Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, Turkologist Ruben Safrastyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

“We are actually seeing Azerbaijan lose a significant part of its sovereignty since the troops of two countries (Russia and Turkey) will be in its territories. Azerbaijan won the war, but it lost a significant part of its sovereignty as a result of the war,” he added.

Safrastyan noted that at the outset of the war, at the highest level, Turkey declared that it pictures cooperation with Russia in Nagorno-Karabakh through the Syrian model, but this was a failure, and Russia didn’t go to that.

“The South Caucasus is not Syria. It is a zone of Russian influence, and Moscow doesn’t intend to share anything with Ankara. Turkey aspires to deploy its troops along with Russian peacekeepers. In addition, Turkey wants to have the opportunity to pay visits and monitor. Of course, Russia won’t take that step. There will only be monitoring through technical resources, and the representatives of the monitoring center won’t have a chance to cross the border of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). Ankara will continue its struggle to expand the spheres of influence in the Caucasus through not only the factor of Azerbaijan against Armenia and Artsakh, but also through the use of the Turkey-Georgia-Azerbaijan political-economic axis. To counter this, Russia will aspire to maintain its influence in Azerbaijan because if Ankara tries to strengthen its positions in Azerbaijan, it will actually strengthen its positions in the South Caucasus, which isn’t in Moscow’s interests. Azerbaijan will also take into consideration Moscow’s interests,” the Turkologist emphasized.