“Azerbaijan and Turkey launched their assault on Nagorno Karabakh to continue the Ottoman project of more than a century ago. Silence encourages them and others”, Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), starts his article.
“One year ago on September 27, the Azerbaijani army, backed by Turkish Special Forces and Syrian jihadis acting as Turkish mercenaries, launched a surprise attack on Nagorno Karabakh”, he says. “When in 1991, Azerbaijan re-asserted its independence upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, its parliament did so based on the borders of the first independent Republic of Azerbaijan and not upon the territory of the subsequent Soviet-created Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. The population of the autonomous oblast voted to secede from Azerbaijani control, a move that was constitutionally valid”.
The article notes that “Baku had committed as part of the Minsk Group process to resolve the territorial dispute diplomatically”. “While Azerbaijani diplomats might say the progress was going nowhere, that was a lie”, Michael Rubin says.
“Biden was right to recognize officially the Armenian Genocide. However, the following day, Blinken quietly waived Section 907 again, effectively rewarding Azerbaijan for its aggression. By both the letter and the spirit of the Freedom Support Act, Blinken’s move violated U.S. law”, he says.
The author of the article has also recalled the continuous aggression by Azerbaijan. “On March 25, 2021, Azerbaijani soldiers threw stones at Armenian civilian cars on the Sarushen-Karmir Shuka road in Artsakh’s Askeran region. Three days later, Azerbaijani troops ambushed an Armenian vehicle transporting the bodies of Armenian soldiers killed in the forty-four-day war. On April 20, Azerbaijani forces fired at an Armenian home on Vagharshyan Street in the Stepanakert, the capital of Artsakh”, Michael Rubin says. “Despite Azerbaijan’s diplomatic promises to respect religious freedom, on April 26, three Azerbaijani soldiers b...
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