NEWTIMES

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Turkey at a critical time for his country. He discussed the defense sector, free trade agreement, and tourism issues at the 9th meeting of the Turkey-Ukraine High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council held on April 10. By the way, the Turkish President visited Kyiv to participate in the 8th meeting of the Turkey-Ukraine High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council held in February 2020. Official Ankara has repeatedly stated that the ensuring and inviolability of the territorial integrity of states are among the key priorities for them. Turkey protects this idea about all countries, including its neighbors Syria, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and others. Official Ankara's relations with Ukraine are based on these principles.

After the peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan in November 2020, the latter immediately set to work on the decontamination, reconstruction, rehabilitation and reintegration of liberated Karabakh, which had suffered enormous destruction over the course of the Armenian occupation over the last 30 years.

The Second Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan changed geo-political situation in the South Caucasus. It is very important to underline that after the Armenian defeat in the April 2016 War, when Azerbaijani army liberated the strategically important hill Lala-Tepe, Armenia's top military leaders strived to regain lost positions rather than accept new realities. As a result of series provocations, full-scale military operations were launched along the entire front in order to suppress the combat activity of the Armenian armed forces, as well as ensure the safety of the civilian population on 27 September 2020.

Today marks the 5th anniversary of the beginning of the April battles. Why did the fighting start? Shortly before the incident, Armenian officials used traditional threatening rhetoric against Azerbaijan and Turkey. At a meeting with Armenian youth, then-President Serzh Sargsyan made accusations against Turkey and distorted the essence of the April 1915 events. In addition, he claimed that Karabakh belonged to the Armenians.

US President Joseph Biden has addressed a congratulatory letter to President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev on the Novruz holiday. It marked the first official contact between the heads of the two states. In his letter, the US President stressed that Azerbaijan is among the key actors in the region.

The former conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus was the main threat to regional security and economic integration. The second Karabakh war which started on 27 September 2020 was a full-scale war. It is very important to highlight that long-lasting Minsk Group-mediated diplomatic talks were resultless. In addition, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's position, when he called into question the "Madrid Principles", led the peace process to a deadlock in which the only way for Azerbaijan to restore its territorial integrity, was successful military operations.

The trilateral declaration signed between the Presidents of the Russian Federation and Azerbaijan and the Prime Minister of Armenia on 10 November of 2020 created substantial cooperation opportunities for all regional countries. The signing of the declaration ended "The Second Karabakh War," which began on 27 September, continued for 44 days and led to the restoration of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. Declaration envisions not only cessation of military operations but also restoration of all transport connections in the South Caucasus which had been restricted because of the occupational policy of Armenia for about three decades.

It goes without saying that the use of natural gas will play an important role in the coming years.

Countless humanitarian tragedies have occurred between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the course of the two Karabakh wars since the fall of the Soviet Union. Thousands of people on both sides fell victim to a dispute provoked by Armenia's claim to the internationally recognized territories of Azerbaijan. The massacre of more than six hundred Azerbaijani civilians in Khojaly, a town with a population of seven thousand people, in bitterly cold morning of February 26, 1992, is the most tragic page of this conflict between the two nations.

The history of international conflicts is regrettably littered with missed opportunities for peace. Rather than accomplishing its aim of charting a peaceful roadmap for postwar Europe, the February 1945 Yalta Conference paved the way for the Cold War by dividing Germany into four occupation zones administered by U.S., British, French and Soviet forces. Now, there exists a fresh opportunity to forge a lasting peace and to extinguish a lingering conflict in the South Caucasus region, where processes of normalization and economic integration are underway in the aftermath of last fall's six-week war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.