By Mariam Levina, Liana Khudoyan
Turkey must be at the center of the new world order and is not going to ask anyone for permission to defend its territory. This policy of the Turkish state was formulated by President Erdogan in a concise and succinct way.
With nearly 400,000 troops, Erdogan declares himself completely unaccountable to anyone. Including NATO, of which Turkey is a member, and the Turkish army is believed to be the second largest and most trained in the bloc.
The opinion about Ankara's complete impunity is not unfounded. In September 2020, Azerbaijan unleashed an aggressive war against Armenia and Artsakh with Turkey's full support. In addition to direct military assistance, Ankara provided its "little brother" with absolutely illegal assistance in the form of the transfer of fighters from the Middle East. This fact was made public not only by the Armenian side, but also by representatives of France and Russia.
With these statements, Armenian News-NEWS.am contacted the NATO Secretariat and asked whether the NATO had ever expressed any interest in Turkey's possible criminal activities. Has any investigation been conducted, given that another NATO member, France, also speaks of criminal acts?
The letter of response, signed by Press Officer Daniele Riggio, advised to contact the Turkish authorities directly. As if NATO had nothing to do with it.
"NATO capabilities were used against Karabakh, and the alliance tacitly accepted it," Mario Nalbandian, member of ARF Dashnaktsutyun Central Council, said the day before at the Socialist International Congress in Madrid. He reminded that in September 2020 Karabakh was attacked by Azerbaijan with serious participation and military support of Turkey, which was joined by radical Islamists brought from the north of Syria, Azerbaijan used the military assistance of the second NATO army. Nalbandian said that during the 44-day war, air transports Israel-Azerbaijan, Ukraine-Azerbaijan and Belarus-Azerbaijan operated uninterruptedly.
In an interview with Armenian News-NEWS.am, Larisa Alaverdyan, Armenia's first ombudsperson, said that she has studied the NATO charter, and it does not imply responsibility for aggression: "Article 5 implies that if any member state is attacked, it means the entire organization is attacked. Accordingly, they have the right to respond and participate directly in repelling aggression committed against a NATO member state by a non-NATO member state. But I was very careful to look for any hint of what would happen if a NATO member state attacked itself, whether it was a NATO member or a non-NATO member. To my regret, there is no hint of such a situation.
According to Larisa Alaverdyan, it is impossible that the authors of the charter did not imagine the multitude of events that could take place in the world.
"Turkey's role in Azerbaijan's aggression against the unrecognized Republic of Artsakh is known. Let's pay attention to the relations of Turkey and Greece, Cyprus. Two NATO member states that are in irreconcilable conflict, because by all documents, by EU definition Turkey has committed aggression against another state, and occupied the northern part of Cyprus. There is an EU decision on this issue, and this is one of the reasons why Turkey is not accepted into the EU.
Therefore, it would have been appropriate, even if it was not originally intended in the NATO charter, at the moment when Turkey committed aggression against Cyprus, to introduce an article, a protocol, an addition on the Alliance's reaction to the aggression of a member state. And today Turkey is already threatening Greece, brutally and brazenly.
And no reaction from NATO. Now it's clear that NATO doesn't consider it its function to stop Turkey when it organized, participated in Azerbaijan's aggression against the unrecognized state of the Republic of Artsakh. This is the UN definition - an armed attack of one state against another is aggression, whether it is recognized or not. This is the note to the article 1 of the UN GA Decision 3314 of December 16, 1974".
Armenia's first ombudsman believes this is not an accidental omission.
"It is an assumption that a NATO member state can commit aggression against another state with impunity. It is naked geopolitics, when between interests and democracy and human rights geopolitical interests definitely take precedence. Geopolitical interest is falsely understood. History shows that geopolitical interest for a short period, and often for a short time, causes great damage in the long run.
Germany is an example of this. It is a struggle for new lands when "the living space is not sufficient for the development of such a race. This is an example that should be a lesson to all. But now we see how NATO is becoming a servant of Anglo-Saxon, the most aggressive geopolitical idea, guided by short-term and, from my point of view, falsely understood geopolitical interests," Larisa Alaverdyan noted.
Similarly, NATO shows a strange disconnect from the consequences of its own initiatives. In February 2004 in Budapest, an Azerbaijani soldier, Ramil Safarov, axed a sleeping Armenian officer, Gurgen Markarian, and tried to kill another Armenian officer, Hayk Makuchyan. The terrible crime took place at an English language course as part of NATO's Partnership for Peace program. While a shocked Europe expressed outrage, NATO remained silent.
Asked by Armenian News-NEWS.am, who represented the Armenian side during the trial in Hungary, lawyer Nazeli Vardanyan asked whether NATO had conducted any investigation into the circumstances of the Armenian officer's murder. "I don't know what kind of investigation they did, or did they do anything at all? Their conclusion was not in the court documents. NATO simply disowned the case, as if they weren't responsible for the safety of the project participants. I always had a question how Safarov brought a huge axe to the dormitory, while there was a metal detector and security guards at the entrance," said the lawyer.
While NATO is silent, Turkey continues to use all its vast opportunities developed by membership in the Alliance to improve the army of Azerbaijan, which is not a member of the organization.
Another NATO days were recently held in Baku.
