Amid flaring border clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia since July 12, Turkey has used unusually tough language to assert its support for Azerbaijan, raising questions as to what its intentions might be in the long-running and complex conflict in the South Caucasus.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has urged Armenia “to come to its senses,” pledging that Turkey will stand by Azerbaijan “with all its means.” Defense Minister Hulusi Akar has warned that the Armenians “will drown in the ploy they have started and will definitely pay for their actions.”

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for his part, seemed to imply that a foreign hand was behind the rekindled clashes, when he said July 14 that Armenia’s “deliberate offensive” was “an affair beyond Armenia’s caliber.” The purpose, he argued, is to block settlement efforts in Nagorno-Karabakh, the disputed enclave between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and “create new conflict zones” in the region.

Russia is the first power that Erdogan’s allusion brings to mind. Could it be that Moscow is seeking to create an extraordinary situation to reassert its influence over Yerevan, wary that Armenia might follow in Ukraine’s footsteps under Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who came to power in 2018 after a “Velvet Revolution” and whom Moscow distrusts?