Nagorno-Karabakh conflict driven by internal crisis in Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan needs a victorious war in Nagorno-Karabakh to offset a domestic crisis driven by a decline in oil revenues and divisions in its ruling elite, Armenian journalist and writer Vicken Cheterian said in an op-ed for independent news website Daraj on Wednesday.

Deadly clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh broke out on Sunday, the latest round of intermittent violence between the two countries since the 1994 war.

But Cheterian said the roots of the conflict can be traced back to the Soviet era, when national groups were granted territorial autonomy, linking ethnic identity to access to state resources.

Under this system, “Karabakh Armenians – who were the vast majority in the “Autonomous Republic of Mountainous Karabakh” but ruled from Baku, had legitimate reasons to feel discriminated”, leading to war in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse in the 1990s, he said.

Azerbaijan’s ruling class “are the children of the Soviet nomenklatura”, Cheterian wrote, using a term referring to bureaucrats empowered under the communist system. The nomenklatura have benefited from “the construction of Baku-Ceyhan pipeline and the oil-money that started coming in from 2006”, he said.

Azeri oil revenues have, however, begun to fall due to a decline in production and the impact of COVID-19 on the international economy curtailing demand. “With less money to divide, in fighting within the various clans of the ruling clan in Azerbaijan increased,” Cheterian said.

War with Armenia could “effectively distract Azerbaijani public”, with authorities confident of victory having invested heavily in military equipment, “including Russian tanks, Belarus ballistic missiles, Israeli and Turkish drones”, he wrote.

The return to conflict will inevitably draw in regional powers, but the scale of Turkey’s intervention on behalf of Azerbaijan is “unprecedented”, the writer said. Ankara has offered full-throated support for Baku, providing military equipment and fighters trained and flown in from Syria as it seeks to bolster a key regional ally.

“The question remains how will Russia – and Iran – will react to the increasing Turkish meddling in the affairs of the south Caucasus?” Cheterian said.