Chaos in the Caucasus: The Great Armenian Sell Out and Turkish/NATO Dreams of a Turan Corridor Stretching to China
On Monday we looked at Azerbaijan’s deteriorating relationship with Russia on manufactured grounds—with a heavy assist from the US and Israel—and how it fits into a long-planned Turkic corridor project slicing through the South Caucasus. Key to that plan is Armenia where the US and company have been laying the groundwork for this operation for years. We’re now seeing it come more fully into the light. Let’s examine what’s taking place in Armenia before turning to Türkiye and wider implications for the Eurasian heartland.
Armenia’s Least Worst Option: Beg Russia for Help (But That’s Not Going to Happen)
The US with heavy French involvement, has successfully turned to Armenia into a tool of the West in recent years. The US has one of its largest embassies in the world in Armenia and even a representative of the US armed forces embedded in the Armenian Defense Ministry. The biggest problem for the West was that the plan to get a stooge government in Georgia failed — an effort that isn’t completely dead, but it’s on life support, and with it the logistics to Armenia.
Nonetheless, the Armenian government, by most objective accounts acting against the interests of its people, has successfully eroded ties with Russia over the past few years,[1] despite Moscow being the historic counterweight to the designs of Türkiye and Azerbaijan. Why did the Armenian government of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan do this? Hard to say for certain. The charitable view is that was a clumsy rebalancing act. Either way, Armenia is now in an untenable position, and it looks like the final sell-out has begun.
There is now talk that the US, having abandoned the plan to weasel itself more comfortably militarily into Armenia, is instead content to turn the job over to Türkiye and Azerbaijan. It’s also possible this was the plan all along and that resistance from the Armenian government and tensions between Azerbaijan and the West were just a feint that are so in vogue in the West nowadays. It would make sense that the plan to open the Turan Corridor not get the green light until Armenia had successfully pushed Russia out of any involvement. That now appears to be the case unless Armenia does an about face and pleads for Moscow’s help, and/or Russia were to forcefully intervene.
As of now, the government in Yerevan is doubling down on its anti-Russia stance as it arrests clergymen and businesspeople who were allegedly plotting a coup. Armenia is speeding towards nationalizing a power grid owned by jailed Russian businessman as Pashinyan stated there is a “high probability that certain circles in Russia are behind these hybrid operations and this hybrid war.” One thing Armenia has not done yet is make any request that Russia vacate its military base in the country — one Russia is reportedly reinforcing:
Armenian analysts are pointing to the Russian Orthodox Church’s opposition to the arrests, as well as the alleged involvement of some members of the ArBat Battalion, a unit of Armenian volunteers that is part of the Russian Armed Forces, as evidence that Moscow is behind the unrest.
Pashinyan and Putin meet in October of 2024 at the Kremlin.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently commented on the upheaval, saying the following:
“This is, of course, an internal matter for Armenia,” he stated. “We are, of course, interested in the preservation of law and order in Armenia, so that Armenia is a prosperous, stable country, friendly to Russia.”
The archbishops who have been detained are key members of the Armenian Apostolic Church, which has been the main driver of protests against Pashinyan over his policies towards Azerbaijan, which some see as a betrayal of Armenian interests.
Included in the arrests is Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, the leader of the Sacred Struggle opposition movement. Galstanyan was educated in the U.K. and Canada and in recent years has risen to prominence due to his opposition to any land deals with Azerbaijan. He has the support of much of the political opposition, as well as the Sasna Tsrer organization, an extra-parliamentary force that is anti-Russian, pro-West, and has perpetrated political violence in the past.
Public outcry and protests have followed the crackdown with some leading to clashes with police. The arrests began as Pashinyan made a historic visit to Istanbul to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
And just prior to that trip to Türkiye the situation had seemingly reached a point of no return with the head of the Armenian Church accusing Pashinyan of being circumcised in comparing him to Judas. Pashinyan responded that he was ready to ‘“prove the opposite.”
Setting aside the status of Pashinyan’s foreskin, where does this all leave us?
Should Pashinyan be looking to make some sort of deal with Türkiye and Azerbaijan, it would help explain the crackdown on the opposition. There is a fear among the Armenian opposition that Pashinyan will agree to—if he hasn’t already—cede territory to allow Türkiye and Azerbaijan to open their coveted Zangezur Corridor. Note from the Monday post that Zangezur would not touch Iranian territory, nor does it mean that Turkiye and Azerbaijan would invade Iran, which seems far-fetched. It does, however, hurt both Russia and Iran economically, weakens their influence in the South Caucasus, and could potentially stir up trouble in Iran’s northwestern states. In other words, it’s a major headache that has significant long term consequences.
And it’s fairly clear that the point from the 2020 Moscow-brokered peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan that Russia oversee any such Zangezur route will not be honored. While Russian officials remain tight-lipped, others aren’t being quite so diplomatic:
Let’s contrast with the stance from EU:
Of course, Brussels and the US are very interested in a direct route to get their hands on all that Caspian and Central Asian fossil fuels and strategic minerals. They had hoped to do so through Georgia, but a Turkic corridor that simultaneously hurts Iran makes for a fine Plan B—even if it means turning to old friend/foe Erdogan.
As the Atlantic Council so-eloquently put it a few years back: “Türkiye can become an energy hub—but not by going all-in on Russian gas.” Washington wants that gas to come from Azerbaijan and elsewhere in Central Asia.
Türkiye Does Türkiye Things
The relationship between Türkiye and the West is often described as transactional and with good reason. That’s usually how things get done with the second most important member of NATO (recall the deal for Türkiye to approve Sweden’s NATO accession in exchange for 40 F-16s).
For months, the EU has been increasing Türkiye’s role in the bloc’s defense industries and it was recently capped off by news last week that the two sides will hold defense talks after a three-year pause. Ankara is looking for access to the EU’s new $170 billion defense fund.
Perhaps the biggest news of all on this front is that, according to Erdogan, the US is easing up on 2017 the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). Washington imposed sanctions on Ankara in 2020 over its purchase of the Russian-made S-400 missile defense system. Erdogan said a month ago that the sanctions, which have hammered Türkiye’s defense sector, are softening and that steps toward lifting them are progressing rapidly, which Türkiye has insisted on for years.
US Ambassador to Türkiye Tom Barrack said recently that he expects a deal on lifting the sanctions by the end of the year, which would involve welcoming Türkiye back into the F-35 program.
There was also the recent launch of a joint venture between Turkish drone maker Baykar and Italian defense contractor Leonardo (Leonardo has very close defense ties with Israel).
Türkiye had for some time been trying to purchase 40 Eurofighter-Typhoon new-generation aircraft, but Germany was holding up the sale.
That sensitive issue is now apparently resolved. According to the German Handelsblatt daily, Berlin is giving the green light.
Recall that prior to the Syria offensive, Germany and others eased off a years-long unofficial embargo on defense exports to Türkiye. Two months ahead of that operation, Der Spiegel reported that Germany’s Federal Security Council, which meets in secret, was approving the sale of $368 million worth of heavy weaponry to Türkiye, as well as reconsidering Türkiye’s request to purchase Eurofighter warplanes.
The big question is what is the West getting in return for all this recent goodwill? One could argue it’s an attempt to shore up NATO’s industrial base, which is severely lacking. That’s certainly possible.
It could also be a cooperation with the US plan to further weasel its way into the Caucasus. While Türkiye’s moves eastwards via a link up with Azerbaijan through Armenia are part of its own grand visions for a Turkic corridor stretching into China and it has long insisted Armenia will cooperate one way or another, it likely took some deals to get Ankara to agree to the potential Washington role in that plan. This US policy is not a product of the Trump administration, but it certainly has its own motivations:
The U.S. model envisions American business interests as a stabilizing force, similar to a recent deal involving rare earth minerals in Ukraine. One U.S. official reportedly told [Olesya Vardanyan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace] that the plan could even lead to a Nobel Peace Prize for former President Donald Trump, suggesting that the initiative may become part of his broader foreign policy platform.
Meanwhile, Türkiye’s eastwards march will ratchet up the pressure on Iran and Russia. Tehran is worried that Ankara’s visions of Pan-Turkism will incite ethnic unrest and divisions in the Azeri and Kurdish areas in the northwest of Iran. As Ali Nassar writes at The Cradle:
It reveals a layered geopolitical project anchored in Pan-Turanist nationalism, Muslim Brotherhood-aligned political Islam, and strategic deployment of military and development tools – crafted to serve Ankara’s national interests while converging with NATO’s broader regional goals.
…Pan-Turanism, an early 20th-century ideology premised on the unification of Turkic-speaking peoples from Anatolia to western China, has been resurrected in Ankara as a vehicle for geopolitical consolidation. Today, Turkiye deploys this vision to deepen its grip on Central Asia – particularly in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan.
This ideological push is operationalized through the Organization of Turkic states, which functions as a joint political, economic, and security bloc linking Ankara with these post-Soviet republics.
Türkiye and the West also have visions of using the Zangezur as an energy corridor to send fossil fuels and other resources from Central Asia and the Caspian westwards while cutting out Russia and Iran, all the while increasing their footprint in these countries, effectively carving out a chunk of the Eurasian “heartland.”
Here’s a better view for those in the back:
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I can’t find the comment right now, but someone here at NC said the Western Zionists see Iran as a game of Jenga. Is it fair to say Iran won the 12-Day War and that Russia is winning/has won in Ukraine? Yes.
But the empire always has tricks up its sleeve, works on long timelines, and as Israel demonstrates daily, it has no red lines.
Should Türkiye, Azerbaijan and Armenia make a move for Zangezur, the bet in think tank landia is that Iran and Russia are too preoccupied with their other conflicts against Western proxies to do all that much about it. We’ll see. Iran has called such a scheme a red line, and Tehran and Moscow will no doubt respond in some fashion.
Economic measures are easy to envision. As Fitch Ratings notes, Armenia’s economy relies significantly on Russia for both trade and energy. For example, Armenia also currently pays Russia $165 per thousand cubic meters of gas, well below the market price in Europe, and Russia is Armenia’s number one trading partner. Due to Russian companies’ large investments in the Azerbaijani oil and gas sector, it is one of the bigger beneficiaries of Brussels’ efforts to increase energy imports from Azerbaijan in order to replace Russian supplies. Azerbaijan is also importing more Russian gas itself in order to meet its obligations to Europe. Türkiye gets nearly half of its natural gas and a quarter of its oil from Russia on good deals and profits from sending Turkstream gas on to Southeastern Europe.
Will economic measures be enough, though? Moscow often seems convinced that at some point national self interest will kick in for these countries, as will an awareness that conflict would be devastating, but common sense is in short supply these days, and the US is proficient at getting rulers to go against their country’s national interest. As Yves detailed yesterday, Russia might in typical late fashion be coming to that conclusion. It’s important to note that the issue of Zangezur was a cause of friction between Moscow and Tehran with Iranian leadership alarmed while Russia thought it was going to be involved and benefit.
They’re on the same page now. Is it too late to avoid violence? With drones being launched against Russia from Kazakhstan and against Iran from Azerbaijan, we could be well on our way towards a wider conflict.
From the American neocon-Zionists perspective, if they set Russia and Iran’s backyard on fire, great. They’re happy to help provide the gasoline. And no doubt they’re already well on their way starting their next inferno while Moscow and Tehran try to put this one out.
Notes
- As we wrote on Monday, Armenia blamed Russia for not coming to its aid more forcefully in its conflicts with Azerbaijan. While one can sympathize with that sentiment, let’s review some other key details:
- It was Armenia that moved peace talks to Western platforms, and it was during those meetings that Armenia agreed to officially recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan.
- Once Armenia did so (and PM Pashinyan declared so publicly), the die was cast. The region was (and is) recognized as Azerbaijani territory by the international community but was overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Armenians. Roughly 100,000 of them fled to Armenia after Azerbaijan blockaded the region for months and then moved militarily to assert control in September – an operation that resulted in hundreds of deaths.
- Despite moving the negotiation process under the guidance of the West and publicly recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as Azerbaijani territory, the Pashinyan government has sought to lay all the blame for its loss at the feet of Russia.
It quickly became apparent why. Armenian officials are arguing that since the 2020 agreement also included provisions about Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh and their control over a corridor that ran from Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, and since that all fell apart, the rest of the document is essentially null and void, which means no Russian involvement in any Zangezur Corridor. We’ve since heard Armenian officials discuss alternatives like private security forces or Russia monitoring from afar—whatever that means. Among a series of downgrades to Russia’s presence in Armenia, on January 1, Russian border guards withdrew from the Armenian-Iranian border checkpoint at Yerevan’s request. Since 1992 Armenia’s borders with Türkiye and Iran had been the responsibility of Russian troops.