South Caucasus deal echoes plan from 30 years ago
Although some in Turkey see Russia as the real winner of the Russian-brokered truce between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the deal has elevated Turkey to a regional power in the south Caucasus.
The losers of the six-week war between Armenia and Azerbaijan are beyond any doubt Armenia and Karabakh Armenians. Turkey is among the winners, though who won what and how are matters of debate, particularly Ankara’s gains.
The content of the Nov. 10 cease-fire deal has provided an opportunity for me to share some exclusive information in the history of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that has remained unbeknown to the public until today.
In February 1992, Turkish President Turgut Ozal entrusted me to carry his “dual corridor” proposal to Azeri President Ayaz Mutalibov. The proposal aimed to resolve the then-relatively new Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through a plan that foresaw a swap of territory between Azerbaijan and Armenia — both former Soviet republics that had recently become independent.
Under the deal, a corridor was to be set up along the Azerbaijani land of Lachin linking the heavily Armenian-populated Karabakh enclave to Armenia. In return, the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic, an Azeri exclave separated from the mainland by a strip of Armenian land with which Turkey shares a six-mile (10-kilometer) border was going to be linked to the Azeri mainland through a 27-mile (43-kilometer) corridor along the Armenian territory of Zangezur, also known as Meghri. The Meghri region is of geostrategic importance for Armenia due to its location on the Iranian border.
