Azerbaijan spares no effort to position itself as a leading player in South Caucasus, using not only petrodollars but a number of anti-Armenian events to gain its end.
The favorite Azeri mottos 'Armenia is an aggressor' and 'Nagorno Karabakh is an integral part of Azerbaijan' are widely known to be unsubstantiated and meant only for brotherly Turkic people, the only ones to be supporting Baku at this point.
The ex-foreign minister of Turkey is no exception. In his address at a Baku-hosted forum South Caucasus in a Changing World, Hikmet Centin yet again spoke about occupation and refugees.
"A number of conflicts are ongoing in South Caucasus, negatively affecting regional stability and hampering cooperation between neighboring countries," Centin said, urging to resolve the Karabakh issue.
The ex-official went on to slam the OSCE Minsk Group's activity noting that the latter needs new ideas in promoting the conflict settlement. He further drew an intimidating picture of the Karabakh conflict "posing threat to international security."
"Finding solution to the protracted Karabakh issue is much harder than settling conflicts in Cyprus, Abkhazia, Ossetia," he said.
One cannot help but wonder: if the Cyprus crisis is so much easier to solve, why can't Ankara settle it? Or does the 'easy solution' mean another occupation of Cyprus?
And once again, Cetin couldn’t help promoting Turkey's involvement in the OSCE MG efforts.
It's unlikely that the diplomat is unaware that Turkey's involvement in the OSCE MG activity is impossible, the former being biased towards one of the conflicting parties. This, nevertheless doesn't stop Ankara from persisting that the conflict would be solved in no time, were Turkey to become a co-chair.
Somehow, Ankara keeps forgetting that every conflict that Turkey seeks to become involved in goes from bad to worse, with Syria as one of the examples.
It would be much better for Turkish diplomats to try and solve their own issues, including Cyprus and Kurds. The Karabakh conflict, solved back in 1994 will be better off without Turkey's involvement.
