Armenia ready to give Azerbaijan (and Turkey) what they want without a fight

CAUCASUS / CENTRAL ASIA - In Brief 30 Oct 2023 by Ivan Tchakarov

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While the world is focused on the Middle East, there has been a flurry of events in the South Caucasus that continue to fire the imagination of those that still anticipate an imminent joint Azeri/Turkish invasion of sovereign Armenia to join Turkey and Azerbaijan by land. And why not? There were large scale joint military exercises last week at the border, which one may argue could have been intentionally timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Turkish Republic. Some of our clients have claimed that it would have been no stretch of the imagination to posit that Erdoğan wants to go down in history as the Turkish leader who defeated the Armenians and brought the Turks and Azeris together by land via the so-called Zangezur corridor. To be sure, our core view, which we expressed here (https://globalsourcepartners.c...), has been that we necessarily must assign higher geopolitical risk premium to Armenia given the possibility that Azerbaijan's appetite has been whetted after the victory in the 3rd Karabakh war. Hence, and possibly in line with logic, we indeed should not be totally surprised if Turkey and Azerbaijan decided to make an attempt on the Syunik region in Southern Armenia. The military exercises were also usefully scheduled in Nakhichevan and the newly liberated territories in NK, thus giving the operational capability to strike from both sides of Armenia proper in the south. Nevertheless, your analyst currently holds the view that an imminent attack is unlikely for the following reasons: Azerbaijan will, in my view, now focus on re-integrating NK into the country. There is an ambitious agenda to offer financial stimuli for Azerba...