IAS PRELIMS 2020/2021

DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS – Oct – 16th

CSTO & NAGORNO – KARABAKH CONFLICT

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 CSTO & NAGORNO – KARABAKH CONFLICT

NEWS ARTICLE
Russia Kicks off Caspian SOURCE IS
war games
RELATED TO

GS – II – INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
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NEWS ARTICLE

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 NAGORNO – KARABAKH CONFLICT

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 Why are they fighting?
• The largely mountainous and forested
Nagorno-Karabakh, home for some 150,000
people, is at the centre of the conflict.
• Nagorno-Karabakh is located within Azerbaijan
but is populated, mostly, by those of Armenian
ethnicity (and mostly Christian compared to
the Shia Muslim majority Azerbaijan).
• The conflict can be traced back to the pre-
Soviet era when the region was at the meeting
point of Ottoman, Russian and the Persian
Lev Borisovich Kamenev
empires. USSR 1ST HEAD
• Once Azerbaijan and Armenia became Soviet In the Caucasus, the Qajar dynasty
Republics in 1921, Moscow gave Nagorno- permanently lost many of Iran's integral
areas to the Russians over the course of
Karabakh to Azerbaijan but offered autonomy the 19th century, comprising modern-
day Georgia, Dagestan, Azerbaijan and
to the contested region. Armenia.

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 • In the 1980s, when the Soviet power was
receding, separatist currents picked up in
Nagorno-Karabakh.
• In 1988, the national assembly voted to
dissolve the region’s autonomous status and
join Armenia. But Baku suppressed such calls,
which led to a military conflict.
• When Armenia and Azerbaijan became
independent countries after the collapse of the
Soviet Union in 1991, the clashes led to an
open war in which tens of thousands of people
were killed.
• The war lasted till 1994 when both sides
reached a ceasefire (they are yet to sign a
peace treaty and the border is not clearly
demarcated).
• By that time, Armenia had taken control of Nagorno-Karabakh and handed it to Armenian
rebels. The rebels have declared independence, but have not won recognition from any
country. The region is still treated as a part of Azerbaijan by the international community,
and Baku wants to take it back.
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 ARMENIA vs AZERBAIJAN WAR…

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

TURKEY PRESIDENT

Defeated
By

Ayaz Mutallibov Ilham Aliyev

Mehmed VI Vahideddin Kemal Ata Turk 1ST AZERBAIJAN PRESIDENT AZERBAIJAN PRESIDENT
OTTOMAN EMPIRE TURKEY 1ST PRESIDENT

Defeated
By

Levon Ter-Petrosyan Armen Vardani Sargsyan

1ST ARMENIA PRESIDENT ARMENIA PRESIDENT

Defeated
By

Ahmad Shah Qajar Lev Borisovich Kamenev Boris Yeltsin

PERSIAN EMPIRE USSR 1ST HEAD USSR LAST HEAD Valdamir Putin
RUSSIA 1ST PRESIDENT RUSSIA PRESIDENT

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 What triggered the current clashes?
• Despite the ceasefire, there were
occasional flare-ups on the border.
• In July this year, at least 16 people
were killed in clashes, Azerbaijan
and Armenia blamed each other.
• Baku said it was forced to respond
after Armenian attacks killed and
wounded Azeris. The Defence
Ministry said the troops have
captured territories from Armenian
forces.
• Armenia, on the other side, blamed
Azerbaijan for launching the “large-
scale” attack targeting peaceful
settlements.
• Nagorno-Karabakh authorities have
claimed that dozens were killed in
the region in the Azeri attack.
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 Conflict is between which countries ?

Armen Sargsyan
ARMENIA PRESIDENT
Nikol Vovayi Pashinyan
ARMENIA PM
VS Ilham Aliyev
AZERBAIJAN PRESIDENT
Ali Asadov
AZERBAIJAN PM

Arayik Harutyunyan
REPUBLIC OF ARTSAKH PRESIDENT Mehriban Arif qizi Aliyeva
AZERBAIJAN 1 ST VICE PRESIDENT
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 What’s Turkey’s role ?
• Turkey has historically supported Azerbaijan and has had a troublesome relationship with
Armenia.
• In the 1990s, during the war, Turkey closed its border with Armenia and it has no diplomatic
relations with the country.
• The main point of contention between the two was Ankara’s refusal to recognise the 1915
Armenian genocide in which the Ottomans killed some 1.5 million Armenians.
• On the other end, the Azeris and Turks share strong cultural and historical links.
Azerbaijanis are a Turkic ethnic group and their language is from the Turkic family.
• After Azerbaijan became independent, Turkey established strong relations with the country,
which has been ruled by a dynastic dictatorship.
• After the border clashes, Turkey held a joint military exercise with Azerbaijan.
• On September 28, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed Armenia for the most
recent clashes and offered support to Azerbaijan.
• There were reports that Turkey was recruiting mercenaries from West Asia to fight for
Azerbaijan in the Caucasus. This fits well into Ankara’s aggressive foreign policy, which
seeks to expand Turkish interests to the former Ottoman territories.
• Recently, Turkey has either joined conflicts or stepped up tensions in West Asia, East
Mediterranean, North Africa and now the Caucasus.
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 Where does Russia stand ?
• Moscow sees the Caucasus and Central
Asian region as its backyard.
• But the current clashes put President C
E
Vladimir Putin in a difficult spot. A
• Russia enjoys good ties with both S
E
Azerbaijan and Armenia and supplies
F
weapons to both. I
• But Armenia is more dependent on Russia R
E
than the energy-rich, ambitious Azerbaijan.
• Russia also has a military base in Armenia.
• But Moscow, at least publicly, is trying to
strike a balance between the two.

Depends More

Depends Less
• Like in the 1990s, its best interest would be
in mediating a ceasefire between the
warring sides.
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 What is CSTO ?
• The Collective Security Treaty Organization
an intergovernmental military alliance.
• It was signed on 15 May 1992.
• In 1992, six post-Soviet states belonging to
the Commonwealth of Independent States — Stanislav Zas
Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, CSTO – SECRETARY GENERAL
Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan—signed the
Collective Security Treaty (also referred to as
the "Tashkent Pact" or "Tashkent Treaty").
• Three other post-Soviet states—Azerbaijan,
Belarus, and Georgia—signed in 1993.
• Later The treaty took effect in 1994.
• Five years later, six of the nine—all but
Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Uzbekistan—agreed Moscow
to renew the treaty for five more years, and in CSTO – HEAD QUARTER
2002 those six agreed to create the Collective
Security Treaty Organization as a military
alalliance.
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 CSTO
Country Membership Year of entry Year of withdrawal
Armenia full member 1994
Belarus full member 1994
Kazakhstan full member 1994
Kyrgyzstan full member 1994
Russia full member 1994
Tajikistan full member 1994
Azerbaijan former member 1994 1999
Georgia former member 1994 1999
1994 (1st time) 1999 (1st time)
Uzbekistan former member
2006 (2nd time) 2012 (2nd time)
Afghanistan non-member observer 2013
Serbia non-member observer 2013
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 INDESTRUCTIBLE BROTHERHOOD MILITARY EXERCISE…..

• The CSTO peacekeeping forces 'Indestructible

Brotherhood' maneuvers will start in Belarus. According
to the organization, about 700 people and more than 100
units of military and special equipment, including
helicopters and UAVs, will be involved in the exercises.
• The goal is to practice actions for joint preparation and
conduct of a peacekeeping operation. According to
experts, in the current situation, when internal political
problems are noted in some CSTO member countries,
such exercises acquire special value.
• According to analysts, the holding of the "Indestructible
Brotherhood" indicates the readiness of the CSTO states
to defend their national and collective interests.

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 Is there a chance of Conflict between NATO and CSTO ?
Article 5 of the NATO requires all
the member states to come to the
aid of any member state subject
to an armed attack. It was invoked
for the first time after the 9/11
attacks on the United States.

VS
Article 3 of CSTO states the
protection on a collective basis of
independence, territorial integrity
and sovereignty of the member
states. Also, the member states are
not legally bounded but can
voluntarily participate in case of an
armed attack over its Member State.
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 What is the strategic significance of the region ?
• The energy-rich Azerbaijan has built several
gas and oil pipelines across the Caucasus
(the region between the Black Sea and the
Caspian Sea) to Turkey and Europe.
• This includes the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan oil
pipeline (with a capacity of transporting 1.2
billion barrels a day), the Western Route
Export oil pipeline, the Trans-Anatolian gas
pipeline and the South Caucasus gas
pipeline and INSTC, which links Moscow to
Mumbai through Baku.
• Some of these pipelines pass close to the
conflict zone (within 16 km of the border).
• In an open war between the two countries,
the pipelines could be targeted, which
would impact energy supplies.
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 CURRENT AFFAIRS
NOTES PREPARED BY

KCR
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