Turkey's foreign minister has referred to recent improvement achieved by the Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders in the Karabakh settlement process.
Ahmet Davutoglu made the comments in an article entitled A Regional Approach to Global Peace, published in the Russian journal, Rossiya v globalnoy politike (Russia in Global Affairs).
“After the countries of the South Caucasus gained their independence, we did our best to restore peace and prosperity in the region. But the occupation of the Azerbaijani territories by Armenia made future regional and world cooperation difficult,” Davutoglu wrote.
The minister said relations between Turkey and Azerbaijan were unique as they were based on brotherhood. He said that Azerbaijan had become a centre of gravity in the Caucasus owing to the development of democracy, improvements in the economy, the human factor and natural resources. “But the protraction of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the occupation of 20 percent of the land by Armenia stops Azerbaijan from making full use of this important potential,” he said.
Ahmet Davutoglu said that as a member of the OSCE Minsk Group Turkey supported a peaceful solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
“Unfortunately, the resolution mechanism, which is as old as the conflict itself, has not produced any effective, concrete results yet. Therefore, the improvement recently achieved by Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan is very important. The Minsk Group is the only international instrument calling on the sides to take concrete steps to eliminate the divergence of views and reach a peace agreement,” he said.
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