“Lasting peace between the [South Caucasus] countries will contribute to the opening of the Zangezur corridor. This, in turn, will provide a direct transport link along the Azerbaijan-Armenia-Nakhichevan-Turkey-Europe route,” Turkish and Azerbaijani media on Tuesday quoted Ibrahim Kalin as saying during a security conference in Baku.
Azerbaijan has been demanding such an extraterritorial corridor ever since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkey has backed these demands, linking their fulfillment by Armenia to the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in July that the opening of the “Zangezur corridor” would be the “final step” in the resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.
The Armenian government maintains that people and goods moving between Nakhichevan to the rest of Azerbaijan cannot be exempt from Armenian border controls and that the two nations should have only conventional transport links.
The corridor demanded by Baku and Ankara would pass through Syunik, the only Armenian region bordering Iran. The Islamic Republic has repeatedly warned against attempts to strip it of the common border and transport links with Armenia. Its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian later in July that the corridor would also be “detrimental to Armenia.”
The Turkish intelligence chief reaffirmed Ankara’s stance on the issue following Iran’s angry reaction to Russia’s recent calls for Armenia to open transport links for Nakhichevan in line with a Russian-brokered ceasefire deal that stopped the 2020 war. Tehran seems convinced by Moscow’s assurances that they would not constitute an extraterritorial corridor and compromise Armenian sovereignty over Syunik.
“We have repeatedly communicated to regional nations that the Zangezur corridor is a red line for Iran, and any alterations would provoke a strong and serious response,” Ebrahim Azizi, a senior Iranian lawmaker, said earlier this month.