Mevlut Cavusoglu: Armenians occupied Karabakh

The due statement came from Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in the 62nd annual session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly held in Istanbul as a response to the Armenian MP Koryun Nahapetyan’s accusing Turkey of supporting the IS.

Cavusoglu said Turkey and Azerbaijan are one nation, two states: "Did I occupy Azerbaijan’s lands? Did I occupy Karabakh? You occupied, why don’t you leave? We gave some advices, made offers to you. We said we’ll open borders if you leave Karabakh. You said why do we lay Azerbaijan down as a condition? We answered Azerbaijan is our fraternal country and its problem is our problem”.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict entered its modern phase when the Armenian SRR made territorial claims against the Azerbaijani SSR in 1988.

A fierce war broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. As a result of the war, Armenian armed forces occupied some 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory which includes Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts (Lachin, Kalbajar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Gubadli and Zangilan), and over a million Azerbaijanis became refugees and internally displaced people.

The military operations finally came to an end when Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in Bishkek in 1994.

Dealing with the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the OSCE Minsk Group, which was created after the meeting of the CSCE (OSCE after the Budapest summit held in Dec.1994) Ministerial Council in Helsinki on 24 March 1992. The Group’s members include Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belarus, Finland and Sweden.

Besides, the OSCE Minsk Group has a co-chairmanship institution, comprised of Russian, the US and French co-chairs, which began operating in 1996.  

Resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884 of the UN Security Council, which were passed in short intervals in 1993, and other resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly, PACE, OSCE, OIC, and other organizations require Armenia to unconditionally withdraw its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh.