‘Turkey needs Russia’s weakening, but not its complete withdrawal from the Caucasus’

Turkey is not impartial in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan and supports Azerbaijan based on pragmatic calculations, according to Mustafa Aydin, professor of international relations at Turkey’s Kadir Has University. Sitting down with CivilNet’s Georgi Mirzabekyan, Aydin notes that, for Turkey to be more influential in the region, it needs to have closer ties with Armenia and Georgia. This helps explain the arrangement of powers in the South Caucasus and the convergence and divergence of major powers’ interests here. The Turkish professor was in Yerevan to participate in the “The South Caucasus: Trends and prospects in the context of the war in Ukraine” conference.