Laurence Broers: Turkey's interests are to 'shore up domestic legitimacy' by supporting Azerbaijan  

Hripsime Hovhannisyan

In an interview with Tert.am, the Caucasus programme director at Conciliation Resources, a London-based peacebulding organization, shared his outlook on the situation around Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh).

Admitting the unpredictability of future developments, Laurence Broers warned nonetheless of Turkey's engagement in the processes in an attempt to offer support to Azerbaijan.

"A lot depends on what happens on the battlefield. If both sides can walk away with a narrative of success that they can present to their societies, this may be another 4-5-day war, as we saw in April 2016. If not, then the motivation to prolong conflict and 'turn the tide' may keep hostilities going, turning this into a much more dangerous, prolonged war," he noted.

The expert said he believes that Turkey is attempting to handle legitimacy issues in its country by assisting its Turkic ally. 

 "Turkey's interests are to shore up domestic legitimacy by supporting fellow Turkic nation Azerbaijan. It has recent battle experience in several regional theatres, and it also has a defence industry keen for new markets. There are reports, although these are not confirmed, that Turkish drone technology may be in use, and there have also been unconfirmed reports that mercenaries from Syria have been transported towards the combat zone. It may be that there is a trend towards the use of force short of actual war, or where there is plausible deniability. Either way, the more that Turkey is involved, the less isolated Azerbaijan is in the face of the Russian-Armenian security alliance. That reduces the costs of military engagement for Azerbaijan, which is after all still a small state that is not part of any formal security alliances," the analyst added.

Azerbaijan launched offensives along the Line of Contact in the early hours of Sunday, targeting also the civilian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. In subsequent retaliatory attacks to push back the adversary, the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army shot down five helicopters, 27 UAVs, 33 tanks, an infantry vehicle and one unit of military engineering equipment belonging to the Azerbaijani air forces.