Turkish foreign minister: ‘To put these two countries on equal footing means awarding the occupier’
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu on Tuesday criticized international efforts dealing with the Azeri-Armenian conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, saying they had achieved nothing in nearly 30 years.
Meanwhile, Ankara called on the international community to stand by Azerbaijan in the conflict and questioned the usefulness of a cease-fire.
“To put these two countries on equal footing means awarding the occupier. The world must be on the side of those who are right, namely on the side of Azerbaijan,” Çavuşoğlu said during a visit to Baku, adding, “There are calls for a cease-fire, but what will happen next?”
The visit by the Turkish foreign minister to the Azerbaijani capital Baku comes a day after Russia, the United States and France called on Armenia and Azerbaijan to agree on an “unconditional cease-fire” after the neighbors began targeting major cities in an escalation of their conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Çavuşoğlu said the latest call for a truce was “no different” from the previous ones.
“Okay, let the cease-fire take place, but what will be the result? Can you [the world] tell Armenia to immediately withdraw from Azerbaijani territories or can you produce solutions for its withdrawal? No,” he said.
The Media Line spoke with Yusuf Erim, chief political analyst and editor-at-large for the Turkish public broadcaster TRT.