The Azerbaijani online publication Report quoted Ahmet Yildiz, Turkey’s ambassador to the United Nations, as saying that “the return of Azerbaijani villages is a key factor in restoring peace in the region.”
“It should be noted that Armenia has realized its responsibility and is moving in the right direction,” added Yildiz. “That will first and foremost have a positive impact on the country’s economy.”
Since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh, Turkey has continued to strongly support Azerbaijan in the conflict with Armenia, adding its voice all of Baku’s demands to Yerevan. Those include the opening of an extraterritorial corridor that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave as well as Turkey. Turkish leaders have indicated that this is a necessary condition for the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations.
The land handover to Azerbaijan praised by Yildiz has been strongly condemned by Armenian opposition groups. They say it would create additional security risks for Armenia and encourage Baku to demand further Armenian concessions.
Opposition leaders also accuse Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian of being willing to give ground on the issue of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. Ankara has resented growing international recognition of the genocide that has been welcomed and encouraged by Yerevan until now.
Earlier this month, a senior Armenian pro-government lawmaker, Andranik Kocharian, called for “verifying” the number of the genocide victims and ascertaining the circumstances of their deaths. Kocharian said Pashinian wants to “make the entire list of compatriots subjected to genocide more objective.”
The remarks sparked uproar from Armenian government critics, civil society figures and genocide scholars. Some of charged that Pashinian effectively echoed through Kocharian the official Turkish narrative that Armenians had died in much smaller numbers and not as a result of a premediated Ottoman government policy.
Pashinian faced more such allegations following his statement on the 109th anniversary of the genocide marked last Wednesday. It was markedly different from his previous April 24 statements. The prime minister no longer called for wider international recognition of the genocide and said instead that Armenians should “overcome the trauma” generated by the slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire. He also put the emphasis on the Armenian phrase “Meds Yeghern” (Great Crime), rather than the word “genocide.”