05 April 2016•Update: 25 May 2016
By Meltem Bulur
RAMSAR, Iran
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has said showing solidarity with Azerbaijan in its hour of need does not mean encouraging it to enter a conflict.
In remarks made after the Azerbaijan-Turkey-Iran trilateral foreign ministers' meeting in the Iranian city of Ramser Tuesday, Cavusoglu responded to Iranian media reports claiming that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was supposedly fueling the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
He pointed out that Armenia’s occupation of Azerbaijani land of Karabakh should not be blamed on Azerbaijan and Turkey. “You should give credit where it is due. Those occupied lands belong to Azerbaijan," Cavusoglu said.
About claims made in Iranian media, he said they were neither true nor factual. "Turkey wants Karabakh problem to be solved as soon as possible, peacefully and within the scope of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity."
Over the weekend, 12 Azerbaijani troops and more than 100 Armenian soldiers were killed in fighting over Karabakh, which was seized by ethnic Armenian separatists in the early 1990s.
On Saturday, Erdogan criticized the Minsk group over the Karabakh clashes. "The struggle over Karabakh, which has been occupied [by Armenia] for many years, is a result of the inability of the Minsk Group."
"If the Minsk Group had taken fair and decisive steps over this, we wouldn't have seen this incident happening right now," Erdogan had said.
The Turkish president also added that Turkey would support Azerbaijan "to the end," adding that he had raised the issue during the recent two-day nuclear security summit, which ended on Friday in the U.S. capital.
Cavusoglu also said that Turkey rightfully said that the Minsk group did not "fulfill its duties" towards the Karabakh issue.
Pro-Armenian militia has occupied Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region since 1993, similar to how pro-Russian militia have illegally occupied parts of Ukraine since 2014.
Three UN Security Council resolutions (853, 874 and 884) and United Nations General Assembly resolutions 19/13 and 57/298 refer to Karabakh as being part of Azerbaijan.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe also refers to the territory as under occupation of Armenian forces.
