Closing borders with Armenia was not convincing enough for Armenians to return occupied lands back to Azerbaijan. On the other hand, it is hard to tell Azerbaijan that it would not be harmful for themselves if Turkey follows a policy of opening of borders with Armenia towards solution.
It is stated that Armenia will return five of seven regions back to Azerbaijan. They do not want to return two regions back for not losing their contact with Nagorno-Karabakh. Such contact may be possible if a revision in borders that would enable Azerbaijan to establish contact with autonomous Nakhichevan. As a matter of fact, Bulent Ecevit had prepared a map suggesting such exchange between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which would establish connection between Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan, and Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
Today, Nakhichevan is like a province of Turkey. It is certain that Turkey would approach an Armenian or Iranian attack against Nakhichevan as casus belli.
Nagorno-Karabakh is an autonomous region in Azerbaijan that has no land connection with Armenia. It is 4,400 square kilometer. According to the population census held in 1989, 77 percent of the total population (192,000) was Armenian while 22 percent was Azerbaijani. It is a historic Turkish land that Stalin made Armenians settle there for providing a continous dispute between Turks and Armenians.
Armenia does not even want to discuss over Nagorno-Karabakh. They claim that Karabakh is Armenian land. On the other hand, Azerbaijan stresses that Nagorno-Karabakh is Azerbaijani as much as seven surrounding regions are. It is obvious that Armenians will be treated as minority if Azerbaijan takes the control of Nagorno-Karabakh back.
The method of solution for such disputes without an armed conflict, is starting negotiations on the topics that both countries can reach agreement on. If parties start discussing the hardest issues then negotiations would be interrupted with conflicts. The point of discussion would even become deeper, and it would left frozen. But if parties focuses on economical and political interests, resolution of the dispute would get easier.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
