Relations with Russia will have to be overhauled, since the main subject of discussion—Karabakh—will disappear. For most Armenians, the Kremlin will be seen as an unreliable ally that abandoned them in their hour of need.
When the Ukraine war interrupted Beijing’s land route to Europe, Azerbaijan and its neighborhood became a vital alternative pathway, but adversaries may seek to disrupt that.
The creation of an independent and sovereign state of Kurdistan is a topic that has a long history and different visions for the implementation of this project.
The territory currently occupied by the compact Kurdish population is about 500 thousand km2. They live at the crossroads of Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran, as well as in a number of neighboring countries, not counting the diaspora elsewhere. In terms of population, approximately 8.1 million Kurds live in Iran (10% of the population), 5.5 million in Iraq (17%), 1.7 million in Syria (9.7%) and 14.7 million in Turkey ( 18 %).
Introduction
The current socio-political situation in Russia and its development trends are the object of close attention of both federal and regional authorities. Politicized ethnicity, which is taking on ever more aggressive forms, threatens the Russian community with ethnoseparatism, secession, interethnic conflicts, and ethnopolitical crises.
At a time when conflicts are increasingly interconnected, and provide tactical levers to assert pressure elsewhere, the competition between Russia-Iran and Turkiye in Syria and the South Caucasus is destined to overlap.
While a direct military conflict remains unlikely, Iran-Azerbaijan tensions are poised to grow as Tehran pushes to fill the gap left by Russia in the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia — altering the balance of power in the region.
On Dec. 31, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian had a phone conversation with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Jeyhun Bayramov, in which he emphasized that improving relations with neighboring countries, including Azerbaijan, is a priority for Iran’s foreign policy. This statement indicates a desire on the part of Tehran to de-escalate the bilateral situation, following a bout of saber-rattling with Azerbaijan this autumn. Nevertheless, tensions between the two countries remain high.
On 12 December, under the pretext of environmentalism, dozens of state-backed “eco-activists” from Azerbaijan blocked the only land corridor connecting Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh.
The blockade created a humanitarian crisis for the 120,000 Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh, cutting them off from the outside world. This is not the first time Baku has taken such a provocative action. Azerbaijan has long been pushing for the creation of the “Zangezur corridor” to connect itself to close ally Turkiye through southern Armenia, thereby cutting off the strategic Armenia-Iran border.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent shock waves round the world. As our look ahead to 2023 shows, several other crises loom as well.
Will he or won’t he? This time last year, that was the question. Russian President Vladimir Putin had massed almost two hundred thousand troops on Ukraine’s borders. U.S. intelligence warned that Russia was preparing for all-out war. All the signs pointed to an assault, bar one: it seemed unthinkable.
L’Azerbaïdjan et la Turquie s’efforcent d’établir le « corridor de Zangezur », en contradiction directe avec les intérêts de l’Iran et de l’Arménie, car il implique le blocage du corridor de Lachin, qui constitue une ligne de vie pour les Arméniens du Haut-Karabakh.